The five blisters; managing complex change
"I made a change from a common thief" - Biggie Smalls
If you’ve ever worked in a startup, you know the only constant is change. Change the product, change the sales pitch, change the culture, etc. If you are lucky enough to be at a growing startup, the complexity of change increases with your success. You need to convert your SDR team from inbound to outbound, but you have 30 people doing that job. You need to change the compensation structure, but you have 50 people already getting paid a certain way. You need to open organic marketing channels, but the team spends $1M/month on paid.
Managing and effecting lasting change is a five-point formula:
Vision
Skills
Incentives
Resources
Action Plan
Missing any of these creates a unique team blisters, and blisters f*cking suck. They look like this:
False starts happen if you don’t convert your thinking, meetings, and conversations into a clear action plan with clear assignments and responsibilities.
Frustration happens when you under-resource a critical initiative. People are stretched too thin and feel like they can’t win. This is a morale suck.
Resistance happens when payments, bonuses, promotions, and glory don’t align with the project goals. Incentives drive behavior.
Anxiety happens when participants don’t have the skills to execute. They start work, and management immediately comes down on them for poor execution. They are playing a rigged game.
Confusion happens when teams don’t have a clear vision of success. There is no charter for everyone to work from, so everyone develops their own charter.
I’ve accumulated all of these blisters in my career. Planning for them is a little more work, and might slow things down by a day or two, but it’s a fair price to pay for effective change management.
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