We have a focus for all of our training on change: delivering benefits to our clients. We also use a similar mantra with our clients to help them be successful in change which is:
How does that affect the benefits?
It is intended to focus every interaction, from the top down, on the benefits and the risks to achieving them. If your correspondent can’t identify an impact on the benefits then you should stop the conversation and have one that does affect the benefits. Using a simple technique like this it doesn’t take long to make a change become benefits focused. Making sure everyone understands the benefits and is focused on delivering them is a simple, but essential, technique to focus behaviour on success.
That sounds very easy, doesn’t it. Well it isn’t; because as humans we have a problem in being focussed. Prosci recently posted an interesting chart on their web site asking how many of their respondents at a webinar on managing change were having the right conversations about benefits. This is the result:
So, only a third of respondents were having the right conversation about benefits. Meaning two thirds of conversations were about something else. This is not going to get the benefits delivered.
What can we learn from this?
- Once again, doing change is hard; even when you know what to do, doing it right most of the time is difficult behaviour. And the people going through change have exactly the same problem!
- Some people do have the right conversation, so the rest of us can follow their lead.