EMBRACE #4 - The joy of postponing non-priorities

‘Indeed, as I said, people are busy, and the transformation tasks are on top of respondents’ actual work. Now, combine the 20-55-25 rule (about ambition) and the 20-50 rule (focused target setting). If you subtract the latter from the former, you’ll arrive at all that work and ambition that employees planned, but that isn’t required anymore.’

          ‘Would you call that waste?’ the young manager asked.

‘No, it’s not wasted but sequentially speaking (remember Stan’s maturity levels), it’s not a priority now. It needs to be postponed. In terms of our school example with the five grades: better wait a moment with reading the French newspaper until you get the irregular verbs under your belt. Postponing contributes to the capacity to change. The employee had the ambition to improve on ten things but now only needs to do four things.’

          Are we talking serious numbers when postponing?’

‘We certainly do,’ said the Transformation Executive. ‘Scientific research in more than 800 teams showed that approximately 60% of what employees planned to improve did not come back in their improvement target. That is a lot to postpone. And eases a lot of the additional work pressure normally associated with transformations.’

          ‘That must require a lot of soul massage! These employees had

           their minds set on something and now must drop 60% of it.’

‘Of course, communication on why exactly this 40% were chosen is part of informing the organization. Upper management has to be very clear about the transformation roadmap and the sequentiality of its parts.’

          ‘All this postponing creates a lot of breathing space!’