It does not matter if you work alone or with a great team...
What matters is having a great culture and a focus on intrinsic motivation for great work to happen. (within this systems and processes also contribute)
I have worked in organizations where people who are amazing, smart, and eager to help and change things, get caught up in the culture, and before they know it they are frustrated, unfulfilled, and amotivated to do more than what is needed.
The usual coffee or lunch discussions go like this:
- “that’s how things are here” -“welcome to silo town” -“the other teams are so difficult” -“so much potential, shame it’s all wasted”
And so on…
If we want to create great organizations or change existing ones, we need to think about the behaviors we want to enable, we need to map the current system that exists in the organization, we need to identify the real root causes and how things interact and then start creating our science-backed plan to enable the change.
Although the mental model is to call it change management, we should not be doing change for the sake of change, instead, we should be thinking about designing an environment and a culture that supports and enables the change.
If we aren't removing the right barriers for our employees, then nothing is going to change - and you can't properly analyze these if you don't use behavioral models.
We need to ensure that a great team can have autonomy, and choices, can feel like they are making progress, and that the environment, people, policies, rules, etc support them.
If this is not enabled, you will have a great team of people, that can’t do anything, and soon enough it will erode their motivation and push them out as they leave.
In the end, you will be stuck with the same issues you had before, trying to go through your x change.
Image Credit
Roberto Ferraro