Here are four questions you should answer to evaluate the soundness of that new process or project you’ve been wanting to get off the ground for a while. 

1. Does It Align with Your Mission?

Does your new initiative align with your organization’s overall mission and company culture? A well crafted Mission Statement should give managers an objective sense of direction by which to make long-term decisions. Framing the conversation around this will allow you to more easily get senior management, your executive team, and all of your team members on board. Ultimately you want to move in the same direction as one cohesive unit. If your initiative doesn’t help move the organization forward in that direction, it might not be worth implementing.

2. What is the Underlying Desired Outcome?

The next question you’ll want to ask yourself is: What’s the goal? Is it the initiative itself or the behavioral change that comes from it? Many times a change in process or policy is not about the new approach itself, but rather it's about the effect it has on your team's behavior or attitude. This could include teamwork, awareness, communication, self-regulation, etc. While you should be using benchmarks and other metrics to envision a goal and see how your new initiative is affecting performance, you also want your team to care about and improve their performance, which takes a change in behavior. For example, a micro-review (small, frequent reviews) process for your team gives your company objective performance data, but it also forces managers to know their team better, thereby forcing your employees to think about their own performance and behavior.

3. Should It Act as a Hiring and/or Firing Filter?

Is this new initiative so important that it should serve as a hiring and/or firing filter? In other words, should those team members that don’t adopt it be let go? Should candidates be assessed based on their alignment with the new process, project, or value. When an initiative is mission-critical, it often requires drastic action. However, beware of hip-shooting around a single activity. This can send the wrong message to the rest of the team. The first inclination should not be let's fire anybody who doesn't adapt. Rather, you should develop a plan of adoption as part of your implementation process. This could include training, monitoring, feedback, and other means of ensuring a successful launch. 

4. How Does It Affect Other Activities?

A narrow minded approach to changes can get set your organization up for failure. Operational silos can create fragmentation and conflicting directions for your team. When considering structural changes to your organization, you should ask yourself if there are any ancillary activities that will be affected by this. Will this generate other inefficiencies? Will it create gaps in communication? This doesn’t mean that those should be impediments to your initiative – it means you will need to resolve those effects before you implement it and make sure you are collaborating with the relevant parties.

Conclusion

Change for the sake of change is ineffective and will wear out your team. Effective change is one that is directed towards your mission, one that is properly planned and implemented, and one that is cohesive with other activities in your organization.

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