Change Is Like A Recipe With No Meal

All too often, organisations charge into change initiatives.
Sure, they identify the problem.
They research ways to address it.
They come up with clever slogans and ways to market it to their employees.
But they often miss a critical step:
Clearly defining what success looks like.
If the change initiative succeeds beyond your wildest dreams… how will you know? Is it something beyond your control, like your stock price goes up? Because millions of variables influence that.
You can get stuck by following change, then scrambling to figure out if it worked.
When you follow a recipe, you know if it worked. You either get a tasty meal at the end, or you don’t.
With change, though, it’s a lot less obvious.
After the change, you can cherrypick some evidence that says you’re better off than before. That’s easy to do. If your cynics are in any way creative, they’ll do the same to prove it failed.
That’s why it pays to define success early and publicly.
Fortunately, you can think big here.
If your change initiative has any teeth, it’ll influence every corner of your organisation.
What does success look like financially? Will profits rise by 30%? Will your expenses halve? If everything goes well, what numbers can you expect to see in your treasure chest?
Think about things from your customers’ perspective. Successful change, as they see it, is like… what, exactly? Maybe they have faster service, fewer complaints, fewer maintenance issues. It could be that nothing changes except for how they feel after dealing with your customer service people.
If you ask your employees, how will they know the change worked? Are the freer to innovate? Less pressured by unrealistic deadlines? Happier, healthier, more willing to stick around?
Think about each department. What will R