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Letters to a Young Manager


Live with it for a while, #121
LTYM > Decision-making



Dear Sophie,
***
Organizational change is hard, especially when it involves changing roles. Uncertainty among the team can run high.

Something I learned from an interior decorator years ago, when she said, we're going to redo this room and it's going to look like this. And I said, "I don't know, that doesn't sound really attractive to me."

And she said, "just live with it for a while, keep an open mind. And then we'll talk about it six months from now." And that concept of "living with it for a while" took the edge of finality away. One of the things that communicated was this is not an immovable set of decisions. This is an evolving set of decisions.

Job rotation, for example, builds that evolving into it. But the other side of it is that if somebody says, I'm not quite so sure whether I want I buy into that role in that structure, one of the avenues of discussion is, let's try this for a year or six months, and then we'll sit down and have a discussion about what's working well, what's not working well. And at least that way somebody doesn't feel as if they've been stuck in a position that is going to be cast in stone and it's not going to change. It's very similar to software projects. Right?

One of the things you hope for is that you get a high rate of adoption and that people leave their spreadsheets and move to the system, for example. A high rate of adoption is often about do people see how their needs are getting met? And so people who approach an organization structure or a reorganized structure, in a large part can be: are your needs being met?

So, listen long and hard, but in the end, make your case and stick to it. I’ve found value in saying that we need to do a, b or c, and let’s live with it for six months and see if needs changing then.
***
Sincerely,
Ed
________________________


Takeaways:

Change can be evolution rather than revolution

Discussion Questions:

1. How have you or your organization handled reorganizing?
2. How is evolution rather than revolution easier to adjust to?
3. Have you experimented with job rotation or shadowing? How is that a "try it" approach?

For Further Reading:





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