As we close out the year, let's remember that organizations don't manage people.. they should enable them!
Some basics to keep fresh in your mind:
1) Let's enable our people: We need to understand the people in the organization not from our gut feelings, but doing so with an evidence based approach that focuses on the behaviors and needs that should to be enabled for them to make progress in whatever it is they are trying to do.
2) Let's manage processes: Processes are what help us make sure that we are putting the right things in place for our people and that we are not relying only on our assumptions or biases.
We have to be clear about processes and align them to the behaviors, the drivers and outcomes - so they take us in the right direction - that means we don't deviate from the things we were meant to be enabling in the first place and if we do - we should be able to stop, evaluate and course correct.
3)Let's design systems: One huge lesson is that organizational change is not about putting all the responsibility of change on individuals, we have to remember that change is not an isolated thing and that there is a system we have to design for.
We need to understand the relationships and the feedback loops and the levers we have in that system, so we can have influence on it.
There is no way you can ask for a behaviour to be done if the system is not going to support it.
If you can't influence the system, then don't expect change to happen.
If we get these things right we can increase our chances of helping organizations succeed in evolving in the right way, so we can improve important things for people: such as autonomy, incentives, wellbeing, psychological safety, culture, norms, leadership, recruitment.....
If these things improve, then the organization AND the people benefit and that should ultimately be the impact of any change work we do.