DISTRICT LINE — It was at least 10 years ago that I first heard a company communications person suggest “why don’t we have a singing competition, to get employees really excited!” And I know of a few businesses that actually went through with it.
The obvious question is “what the heck does that have to do with business?” And all I can say is “hear, hear.” I am not keen on competitions at all in companies, for reasons you can find elsewhere on this site.
However, there are some things that we can learn from reality TV shows and competitions of the sort. And they are quite simple but worth thinking about:
• people like to see a story unfold
• they like to feel they have a role, or some influence in it
• we are still inherently interested in people and we want to relate to them
• when the story goes off script, or a perceived injustice has happened, we get angry
• people can (and do) follow a long-term story, through all the twists and turns
I raise all these because they can all be applied to the earliest possible steps in change management.
It doesn’t always suit consultants (like us) to say that people have these kind of basic needs in following business change…
But they do.
/df
