The six pitfalls
- Build from the top down, forcing compliance without spending the needed time to get real team buy-in and commitment.
- Ignore the people in the organization and/or the market who can be the most helpful to you: the tactical experts.
- Get in your box and stay there, ignoring others because your industry is “different.”
- Play nice at the expense of holding people accountable.
- Don’t change.
- Encourage groupthink, and promote work situations that enable really smart people to make really safe, watered-down decisions.
From the pitfalls “don’t change” is one that I have seen concurrently in each of my roles. Tenured employees who are content with how things are and vested in old processes seem to be the habitual offenders of inflexibility. I recall working with a Senior Generalist who constantly played devils advocate, rejecting participation in new campaign initiatives. It wasn’t until a campaign started leveraging results and she missed in celebration and representation of the milestone the team had accomplished that she started to realize the value of change. Not to mention the fact that others were receiving bonuses for areas she was not. Sometimes if you don’t change your wallet won’t either. “As Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome”. “Change is necessary, and needs to be planned for and promoted. Don’t plan for change, and expect terribleness to ensue.” – WFED 881 Lesson 4 Professor John Dolan