When an organization sets out to change its direction in a big way or make a cultural shift—say, to be more entrepreneurial—it’s probably going to put those changes on paper, whether through a long memo, a strategic plan, or a report. There's a good chance, if it’s a report, that it will be well-written, look professional, and have some good ideas in it. There’s a good chance the report will be distributed among managers and key staff members, where it will have a prominent place on their desks, bookshelves, or computer desktops. And there’s a good chance the report will simply sit in that place of prominence, while every one of them gets busy with all the time-critical things they have to do.
There’s a good chance, ultimately, that very little will happen.
Another way to say this is that coming up with a solution is a lot easier than making sure it is implemented. And that’s why
there is book after book after book written on the subject. Lucky for me, I’m not writing a book. But I recently worked on a project with a public media organization that highlights three critical steps that change efforts often miss.
