TONY ZIPPLE, SCD, MBA
SENIOR CONSULTANT, TALENT OPTIMIZATION
If you’re like me, you came home from NatCon22 with a notebook full of great ideas. They could be anything from improving the quality of your services, the attractiveness of your workplace, hiring engaging staff, increasing the success of your organization, or improving your leadership skills.
As well-intentioned as we are about implementing all these great ideas, the reality of returning to work intervenes. The day-to-day demands of work and home, including catching up on the activities that you missed while you were gone, seem to squeeze out our energy to implement new ideas. Is there something we can do to increase the odds that we will convert some of these great ideas into actual practice in our organizations? I have two suggestions that may help.
First, commit to implementing a maximum of one or two changes. Organizational change can take a lot of time and effort. As a result, when we tried to do too much, we end up doing nothing. Review all of your ideas and select one or two that you think are most worthy of implementation. Look for ideas that are practical, timely, and will yield big returns. Projects that sound great but take more resources than you have, are less critical to your immediate needs, or will not produce demonstrated value in the short term are not the best place to start. Once you have identified one or two ideas, make a personal commitment to implementing them. Taking time to sort through all the possibilities and commit to one or two changes that you will do is far better than thinking about 101 changes that never get done.
Second, develop a quick plan for putting the ideas in place. Good intentions are seldom enough. You need a real plan. I like WOOP as a structure for developing plans that are simple but effective. WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, and Plan. It is a process developed by Gabriele Ottingen and his colleagues that has proven to be helpful in a very wide range of personal and organizational situations.
The process is simple. Start with your Wish. What is your idea- the organizational change that you want to make or the project you want to accomplish? The more specific, the better. Next, envision the Outcome that you expect to get from this wish. If you implement your organizational change or finish this project, what would the specific benefits be? Third, identify the Obstacles that you anticipate getting in your way. What are the barriers between you and your success? While you may be able to imagine everything going smoothly, think of one or two things that are most likely to derail your wish. In short, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Finally, build a robust Plan for overcoming these specific obstacles and achieving your goal. Your plan can be as long or short as you like. What is important is that you have a clear picture of what you’re going to do when you hit the barriers between you and your wish.
Following this process increases the odds that you will succeed in your organizational change. In the end, you will still have a long list of things that you did not do, but also a list of accomplishments in which you take pride.
For more information on WOOP, click here.
If you work in the behavioral healthcare industry and need help with implementing organizational change, employee engagement, or strategic planning, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can help your organization run at peak performance so you can get back to what you are passionate about.
