How To Maintain Lasting Change In An Organization

The ability to change a company culture involves an aligned vision, buy-in from the leadership team, and dedication to company goals. It requires a positive mindset and the ability to adapt. Another part of the change process is the celebration of wins. There are many companies who have all of this ready to go and the process in place before facing an impasse.

Change doesn’t happen as quickly as expected. People begin to lose faith or settle into their own comfortability rather than do what’s required to make real change happen. Resilience in an organization is the difference between getting over the hill and plateauing or worse, sliding back into old ways. This can be especially difficult in organizations that experience high employee turnover. You may have the right people in place, but when you begin to add or subtract players, you have to ensure all steps are aligned again before moving forward.

It requires a strong foundation and an effective communication strategy among your company and especially your leadership team. Without the proper foundation set, every added piece to the process is set on shaky ground just waiting to topple. Identify if your organization has what’s needed to maintain lasting change and the resilience to succeed.

The TakingPoint book guides leaders through 15 fundamental pillars of building resilient teams. Each are of equal importance but we’ll cover a few more in-depth here.

Focused Sense of Urgency

The keyword is “focused.” Urgency without focus leads to chaos and focus without urgency doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s important for your leadership team to have a non-complacent attitude. Yes, it matters to reward people when kudos are due, but that doesn’t leave room for sitting back and not giving the same effort as before. This is where many organizations fail: pumping up the wins too much and leaving no acknowledgment of setbacks or losses. The focus wanes, the urgency is lost. It’s more fun to talk about how good you are, but it’s talking about where you can improve that creates a strong foundation.

Resiliency Attracts the Bold

Teams who are resilient and can see tasks through despite difficulties attract others who wish to empower and lead in the same way. If no one in your company is willing to step up and do bold things, change cannot exist. What you have is status quo and a team that likes to stay within their comfort zones even if it’s not what is best for themselves, their teams, or the company.

Mediocrity Isn’t Allowed

The bare minimum has no place on resilient teams. Doing mediocre work is right on the edge of underperforming, in some cases, it can be worse. The longer someone is satisfied with providing and accepting so-so work, the longer it will take change to happen. By measuring goals through clear KPIs or another actionable measure, you can clearly identify the different level of standards.

You may have all the components needed to create change but do you have the resiliency to commit to it?

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