Consider the following scenarios:
- As a team facilitator, you diligently take notes, capturing all the tasks, responsibilities and due dates for the team. After the meeting, you send out an email to the entire distribution list with the notes as an attached Word document.
- As a team facilitator, you diligently take notes, capturing all the tasks, responsibilities and due dates for the team. After the meeting, you take a few minutes to sort out each team member’s tasks and send them out separately to each individual in the body of an email marked “Your responsibilities for next week’s meeting.”
Which team would you expect to complete more of the tasks for next week? The one where the team facilitator made it easy to see what needs to be done. Specific expectations. No extra clicks. No digging to find what to do.
So often, we design change so people need to jump through hoops in order to accomplish it. Think about the effort you expect people to expend and see what you might eliminate or reduce (albeit with some extra effort on your part). The easier you make change for the people going through it, the easier change will be.
How might you make the change easy?
Read more of the 99 Ways to Influence Change.