Most organizations deal with change grudgingly.
Change is something we rarely looked forward to, and it’s generally not considered part of the
routine operational activity. Rather, it's an exception to it, often about as welcomed as a root canal.
Most folks prefer to have as little change as possible, and when it comes up, they grind their teeth and do their best to work through it with minimal pain.
Here at Zingerman's, we've successfully turned that mentality around to make organizational change a regular part of our work. It’s a tool that people look forward to using, a process that everyone in the organization understands and to which they always have access.
In the same way that open-book management teaches business finance to everyone in the organization, we do the same thing with organizational change. Rather than leave the decisions in the back room with the bosses, our Bottom Line Change (BLC) is a process that teaches change to everyone. It mimics proper open-book management by applying the same concepts—knowing and teaching the rules, keeping score and sharing the success (and, implicitly, the stress)—to organizational change.
When we use Bottom Line Change regularly, we create a wealth of positive outcomes, from the more obvious like lower stress and higher productivity to the less obvious like minimal internal dissention and a loss of the “victim” mentality.
When other organizations adopt similar beliefs and practices, they experience a wide variety of positive changes throughout their organization.
For example, here are some of the ways our organization has benefited by making change such a part of our culture and organization:
Like open-book management, it's a very different way to work than how mainstream business does it.
But the wonderful part is, it’s equally as effective, if not life changing!
I am looking forward sharing the Zingerman’s Bottom Line Change recipe at this year’s Gathering of the Games breakout session to review the basics of its implementation. For more information about the conference, click below:.
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