How Many Golden Eggs Of Success Can The Goose Lay For You In 2022?
Happy Belated New Year *|FNAME|*!
This past month I've been getting back into the swing of things after a rejuvenating trip to Coppertoppe Inn in New Hampshire. Always the goal setter, I have set these New Years Resolutions:
- Change by Design will double our sales numbers.
- Our team will continue to deliver well-crafted, effective performance improvement solutions (both training and non-training) that meet the specific needs of each client.
- I will personally grow our capacity by hiring respectful people who fit in our joyful culture, doing what they most enjoy at a high level, while being paid a good hourly rate.
- I will begin building my speaking business.
- My family will take 3 big vacations this year, and 3 mini-vacays in-between, for well-earned rest and renewal
Although there are no gym fitness goals this time around, I'm still keenly attuned to that frustrating feeling of failure that comes when a goal begins to look unreachable. It's 1 step forward, 2 steps back, often followed by guilt. When that happens, I just remember the reality of change: it's a process. So here are 4 principles from the change literature I find helpful for achieving meaningful change:
1) If you can do something new one time, you are twice as likely to do it again.
We learned two valuable lessons during our trip to New Hampshire. The 1st is: take the trip to begin with. The 2nd is: leave a buffer in the schedule... because of cancelled flights. We will adjust our dates next year to reduce the risk. In the same continuous improvement vein, Change by Design is also implementing ISO 9001:2015 standards for small businesses to help formalize our processes. Starting this effort is the first step, but it will take 2 or more years to get it fully up and running. These standards will help us improve even more our delivery of consistently high and positive results for our customers. I have also hired a team building coach, Ricky Braswell of Beyond Coaching, for the HY1 2022 to refine our cultural model for my central team. That way, as we grow this year and each subsequent year, we will have a solid company culture that can be propagated out to our growing cadre.
2) If you believe that you can, you probably will, as long as you have a grasp of what it will take.
When we finally returned home, we had the chance to visit our church and see the beautiful new altarpiece at the front of the worship hall. As donors to the meticulously planned year-long effort, it was especially meaningful to see this healing recovery effort after an arson fire in 2019. Making lasting change starts with believing change can actually happen. Your organization likely starts the year with quarterly goals that include resource planning, budgets and other considerations. This is routine. Company culture shifts, however, are the most difficult to achieve, because the longer a culture has persisted, the more entrenched it is. It's simply a futile exercise if everyone doesn't truly believe change can happen, which happens a lot in established organizations. All change can be accomplished, provided there is the will to follow through. It starts and ends with leadership, who must be open-minded and willing enough to accept that they too must change to ensure organizational change… and to follow through. Without their buy-in, there will simply be more of the same, leading to suffering morale and an organization that is much less productive and effective than it could be.
3) The force of inertia behind a behavior pushes us to maintain the status quo. To overcome, we must exert as much or more energy into the new behavior as was put into the old behavior over the years.
Twenty years ago, before Paul and I married, we agreed to forgo an engagement ring. For us it was all about love and trust. Over the past two decades, we've continued to grow together by leaps and bounds, working hard to overcome challenges from our past to create the life we share today. It's required a lot of persistence, but persist we have. So this Christmas, he presented me with a huge surprise gift: a 20-year anniversary solitaire ring. A diamond, forged by intense pressure and heat over a long period of time is a perfect change metaphor for our life together. It brought me to tears. Transformation – whether in a person, an organization, or even mineral – takes energy. A lot of energy. Over time. Remember that meaningful change doesn't happen in an instant. It can take a year, several years, a decade, or more, so plan accordingly and keep pushing forward.
4) Willpower is like a muscle. Don't use it at 100% for long - it will fatigue. But a steady 80% effort, with rest, will lead to greater willpower.
My goals for the new year are typically ambitious. In the past I've worked long hours up through Thanksgiving, through Christmas, and then non-stop through the rest of the season. However, I've learned from my business coach Elizabeth Barbour how essential it is to take time off for R&R. She turned me on to a book titled Sabbath that has helped me see down time as essential for growth…just like the research says! And I must say, it works! Using the book's analogy, if Change by Design is the goose that lays the golden eggs, and I want to avoid killing it (and myself and my team) through never-ending long office hours, we need to stick to 80% effort when working, leaving something in the tank for unforeseen challenges. In that vein, I took the week before January 1, 2022 to get ready for the year to come and develop a reasonable plan of action for myself and for our growing team.
The four principles detailed above undergird any change management effort, whether it's for an individual or an organization. I'm pleased with the gold eggs Change by Design produced this year in terms of work achieved and satisfied clients served. And I foresee many more golden eggs for 2022 as we continue aligning our business with our clients' results and using our iterative continuous improvement approach to always do better. Thank you for your loyal readership, and here is to all of us having our best year yet!
Sue
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