New Year…New Goals…New Approach?

For many organizations – ours included –  January 1st brings about a sense of optimism and renewed enthusiasm for the opportunities the New Year can bring.  Likely you have spent time over the last couple of months developing new goals and strategies to grow, expand, and innovate to take your organization to new heights.

Then January 2nd arrives with one common challenge… making it happen!  

Very few organizations struggle to set goals for themselves. However, what separates organizations who achieve their goals from those who’s goals fall by the way of most New Year’s resolutions doesn’t have much to do with the goals themselves. In many cases it is due to their organizations ability to understand what changes they need to make to achieve those goals and their commitment and ability to manage those changes.

Likely you are ready to grow, and may be willing to change, but are you ready for the change? If you don’t have an answer to this important question this simple tool may help you.

Change Readiness Checklist  For each of the items on the Readiness Checklist below, give your organization a 5 if you can answer a resounding Yes, and scale down to 1 if the answer is Absolutely Not.

• Are the executives who will get the return from the investment truly committed to the entire project?
• Is the primary objective of the change to improve a business issue such as increased customer experience or profitability.
• Have you assessed the impact of the change on people, process, information and technology equally?
• Are you prepared to dedicate resources according to the plan? Or is the plan going to shift based on resource availability?
• Is there a governance process in place that can prioritize projects across the organization and shift resources appropriately?
• Do you have a change management partner that has the capabilities to strategize, create, and implement all of the critical success factors?
• Have you thought through the trade off s between customizing the out of the box solution and adopting the out of the box solution – both have implications.
• Is your implementation planned for more than a year? Success is dependent on focus, and focus is hard to maintain.
• Does your solution creation process drive agility, consistency, and repeatable results?

Answering these few simple questions can help put your ability to change into proper perspective, and in turn accomplish your goals.

Remember…

“If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.” — W. L. Bateman

Happy New Year!