Changing the addresses of comfort zones

It is a truism that stagnation is the one sure road to irrelevance and failure. Today’s supply chains would be virtually unrecognizable to procurement people even 10 years ago, and change is coming even faster today. So why is that that is can be so difficult to create change in an organization?


One of the many reasons is that despite folks understanding of the above, they like the way things are. They have their comfort zones. Even if their relationships are less than effective, they understand and can manage within them. I once started work at a new company to find that my Materials manager made our sales forecast each month because she could not get one from Sales.

When I found this out I immediately went to work with our Sales group to get an effective forecast that they could be accountable to. After some time we established a SIOPS style group process to have Sales, Marketing, Product Development and Ops agree on a monthly material plan for the company. After going through this process, I discovered that my Materials Manager still made her own forecast! She claimed that it “helped her to understand the demand” I was dismayed at the time wasted, and even more dismayed when she tried to load the MRP with it.

So how do we get folks out of the comfort zones? We don’t, we move them. People at all levels need to have a clear understanding of how their actions affect the bottom line. If we are advocating change it should be in alignment with company objectives. If not why are we changing? In effect if we do not change, our company’s objective will not be met and that can be very “uncomfortable” for everyone. In each case, we need to spend the time at all levels to help people to understand that “why’s” of the change and how this is both necessary and beneficial. In the process we can see that the “new world order’ is actually the comfortable place to be.

This process is time consuming and sometime difficult, but is can be the difference between success and failure in your next change initiative, When the comfort zone is moved, the team is pulling the direction of the change, adding ideas, insights and energy to the change process, and owning the result!


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