Change is comin'

Ideas on helping your team evolve while keeping change fun.

By Andrew Hay, CAMEx, CCAM-ND.PM

Change is inevitable and it is human nature to resist change for fear of the unknown and comfort in the consistent.

This is particularly true when a change is ‘out of the box’ or ‘radical’ thinking. What if your company embraced change and celebrated those who adapted to changes while still working with those who were late adopters? What would that look like and how could that be achieved?

The following article focuses on ways your company, management teams, employees, and clients can embrace change and evolve to be more efficient and produce at a higher, and happier, level.

Highlight the wins, not the failures

Too often we focus on fixing what is wrong instead of celebrating what is done right. Which is easier? To get others to remember a new procedure or policy by highlighting those who have already begun to do it correctly or to constantly nag your managers and admin staff to remember to do that procedure or policy only pointing out when they make a mistake or forget to follow new directives?

When introducing a new policy, procedure, or item of focus try having positive discussion in team meetings surrounding those who have ‘won’ at adapting and encouraging those who have not yet ‘won’ to apply the best practices of your best performing employees (or board members).

Visuals help reinforce the message

Everyone has seen it at one point or another, the big thermometer that gets colored in red each time more money is raised, or items are sold or the poster that indicates how many days the factory floor has gone without an injury. Those are age old ideas that can be evolved into ideas that are more dynamic and fun for your teams.

When introducing something new to your team consider what habits you want to create for your staff and find a fun way to visualize that for them each time they achieve a milestone or ‘win’ at creating that new habit. This can also be used if you have a need to strengthen a habit that staff may have become complacent about. Having the visual is a constant reminder every time they walk into the break room, or go to the copy machine of the habit or goal you are looking to achieve.

The visual can have some meaning or simply be something fun. “Bring home the Bacon”, and every time there is a success a new piece of bacon gets put into the frying pan. “Reserve for the future” where every reserve study that comes back ahead of schedule is represented by a tick up on a speedometer towards the magic 88 MPH. The possibilities are endless and we all know this industry is full of creative minds that can come up with great ideas.

Not everything you introduce to your teams has to be on a large scale. These concepts can be used on day to day items that you want to ensure your teams or clients focus on like completing monthly site inspections, getting budgets out earlier than usual, making sure you’ve got all your reserve studies ordered, or completing reserve projects.

Every year at a minimum the legislature in our industry causes a need to shift focus and create new habits for managers. SB 323 and SB 326 were big changes for our industry and adapting by using some of the strategies mentioned above is an innovative way to help managers, support staff, and boards to adapt to this ever-changing environment and create a positive outlook around a difficult change to our task list.

Andrew Hay, CAMEX, CCAM-ND.PM is Vice President, Management Division of The Helsing Group, Inc.