Welcome to another episode recap of the Harmonious Workplaces podcast! In Episode 112, hosts Rich Cruz and Ben Kleinman tackle a vital organizational question: what can you do to ensure your hard-earned changes don’t stagnate, but serve as a foundation for continuous improvement?.
Let’s dive into the core strategies they shared for keeping organizational change alive, thriving, and adding long-term value to your business.
Moving Beyond the “One and Done” Change Mentality
Often, organizations treat change initiatives as a checklist item. Once a new process or technology is handed over to the business during the sustainment phase, leaders tend to consider the job done. However, Rich and Ben argue that instantiating change within the business is just the beginning of a longer game.
Because people, processes, and technology are highly fluid, your initiatives must evolve to remain fresh and meaningful. The ultimate goal of both project management and change management is to fulfill the organization’s vision and continuously add value. Setting up continuous improvement mechanisms and defining metrics during the handoff phase ensures that you have a baseline to measure future success and prevent stagnation.
The Importance of Baselines and “Juicy KPIs”
You cannot improve what you do not measure. A common project pitfall is focusing entirely on an aspirational future state while neglecting to baseline current performance. Without a clear understanding of where your culture, processes, and technology currently stand, you cannot accurately measure the delta to determine if your initiative actually improved anything.
Establishing agreed-upon Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) early on—or as the hosts jokingly call them, “Juicy KPIs“—is essential for tracking progress and ensuring that your continuous improvement efforts align with real organizational goals.
Modern Methods for Gathering Employee Feedback
How do you actually collect the feedback needed to fuel continuous improvement? The hosts discuss several practical methods:
- Surveys and Change Readiness Questionnaires: While regular pulse surveys are helpful, they only capture isolated points in time and can suffer from recency bias or skewed responses from only the most highly motivated employees. Pre- and post-implementation readiness questionnaires can be highly effective for assessing sentiment at critical project milestones, such as moving a software implementation from a test environment to a live state.
- AI Sentiment Analysis: With AI tools like Google’s NotebookLM, organizations can analyze meeting transcripts from platforms like Teams or Zoom to gauge broader employee sentiment over time. However, Rich warns that this requires a “human filter”. AI can sometimes try to give you the answers you want, and in a top-down culture where employees are afraid to speak up on camera, the silence can artificially skew your data.
- Leveraging the Management Team: Frontline managers are your boots on the ground and can provide vital qualitative data regarding whether quality has improved and how employee sentiment is shifting. Bringing managers into structured peer groups—similar to the Entrepreneurial Operating System’s “level 10 meetings”—can offer them a safe environment to voice concerns, socially support one another, and brainstorm coaching solutions for struggling employees.
The “Knowledge to Performance Tree” Framework
To tie these concepts together, Rich and Ben reference their Knowledge to Performance Tree model, an organizational development framework originally featured in the December issue of TD Magazine. This model envisions workplace systems as a tree:
- Roots: The foundational inputs, including organizational systems, processes, and culture.
- Trunk: Developmental drivers, including formal and informal learning, mentoring, and psychological safety.
- Branches: Behavior enablers such as goal setting, contingency planning, and strategic alignment.
- Fruit: Outcomes and performance—the tangible results like employee engagement, innovation, and customer satisfaction.
Where do feedback loops fit into this ecosystem? They are the soil, water, and nutrients that continuously nurture the entire tree. Surveys, audits, and two-way communication channels provide the necessary environment for the tree to thrive, allowing the organization to take an iterative approach to performance.
Start Small and Nurture the Process
Driving continuous improvement is a long game. Like a tree, change has to take root organically to become a true part of how your organization operates. If you start small, gather data intentionally, and continuously nurture your workplace ecosystem through feedback, your initiatives will bear the best possible results.
Ready to ensure your organizational changes don’t just survive, but actively drive continuous improvement? Take the next step with the Harmonious Workplaces Change Adoption and Execution Service. Our proven methodologies and expert consultants will help you execute organizational change smoothly and successfully. Visit our website to book a free 30-minute information session today!
0 Comments