I once received a mandate to reduce my organization’s budget 40%. This would absolutely impact jobs.

But I knew what to do. I’d seen this done before, so I knew!

With the little time we had, I took my leaders through a process called Activity Value Analysis. We documented every activity the team performed and how much time and cost it took to perform it. We polled clients on how much they valued these activities. And we reduced the least valuable items and built a new structure. Brilliant…I was a maestro!

Not wanting to impact productivity, we kept this close to the vest. (Not that you can really hide the secret budget meetings.)

Then came the announcement. And then the surprises.

You see, many of those who remained with us, they also had been through this kind of thing. And they had seen it done differently…in some cases, better. They had concepts we never contemplated. They had better line of sight into why clients valued or didn’t value activities.

“You could have asked US,” they were essentially saying.

This transformation was on the ropes. We corrected what we could, but, for example, we had made some wrong personnel decisions…things you can’t do over.

In the many years since this learning experience, I’ve learned that including people—getting buy-in by making the change everyone’s idea—is key to successful change. Many changes fail specifically because people are not included…it’s not their change…their idea. I’ve spoken to thousands of people about this critical concept.

Yet I still ask myself: If I could do THAT change all over again, would I do it differently? Would I tell everyone about the coming 40 percent cost cut? Would I tell those who I thought were staying?

So, I’m curious: What would you do? Email me at al@alcomeaux.com and tell me what you think; I’ll reply to you with my thinking.

I look forward to your comments…and to being in touch.

Al Comeaux