Data from a recent Statistica survey shows the share of U.S. adults who have made common New Year’s resolutions for 2025:
To save more money – 21%
To eat healthier – 19%
To exercise more – 17%
To lose weight – 15%
To spend more time with family/friends – 14%
To stop smoking – 9%
To reduce spending on living expenses – 9%
Not making a resolution – 43%
I’m a 43-percenter. I can’t feel bad about not meeting expectations if I don’t create any!
But the new year, with its traditional resolution period, is a good time to remind ourselves of the opportunities for change that come with a new year, a new job, new company initiatives and other changes in our lives.
For better or worse, changes are coming at record pace in our lives.
Creative destruction – the dismantling of long-standing practices to make way for innovation and change – was a term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940’s. And no matter the industry, business or organization, it speeds on faster than ever before with new ways of doing things.
But in these changes are embedded opportunities to improve the ways we lead and manage people.
A Case Study
In our flagship MARC training course for supervisors, we present a case study where one employee in a work group is a malingerer that has negative effects on the work group and company. He doesn’t work his fair share (or really any) overtime. He uses all his paid leave in the first quarter of each year and quickly gets into discipline for poor attendance. His work quality is marginal at best. He loses his tools. He fails training courses.
Yet he remains employed for many years without much more than an occasional warning.
Then the company announces a new corporate-wide austerity initiative to, among other things, ensure that all employees are efficiently meeting expectations and standards.
A new supervisor, tasked with meeting the goals of the initiative, works with the employee through structured job performance counseling for a period of nine months – resulting in the employee’s successful transition to competency in his job.
Two new things provided the impetus for needed changes – a new supervisor, and a new corporate initiative.
The following is quoted from Tim Creasey’s “5 Tenets of Change Management,” updated August 8, 2024 and found at prosci.com:
“As an anchor point for starting a discussion, we must agree that we change for a reason. As simple as this sounds, a key principle for managing change is that a different future state can be envisioned, and we are changing to that future state to achieve a specific a desired outcome….The reasons for change can vary greatly, such as revenue growth, improved customer satisfaction, reduced costs, better product or service quality, reduced risk exposure, improved quality of life, etc. (emphasis added)”
To change the way people work, we must be able to envision a future state and act in new ways that are aligned with that vision. The vision must be strong enough and clear enough to spur and support the great, sustained efforts that are needed to overcome the inertia of past behaviors and practices.
Replacing supervisors is often not the answer for change and should only result rarely and after thorough deliberation based on all the facts. Sometimes a scapegoat can look like the easy way out of problems.
As I write this blog, The NFL playoff picture is all settled. Yesterday was “Black Monday,” called such because it begins the annual round of NFL coach firings for teams that are not playoff-bound. Will those firings help the teams next year? The Philadelphia Eagles fired head-coach Andy Reid in 2012. Seems like he’s done pretty well for the Kansas City Chiefs since 2013.
Effective training for supervisors, aligned with new direction from above, will often be the ticket to improved employee and organizational performance.
MARC’s labor and employee relations training program, facilitated by seasoned labor and employee relations experts, provides an exceptional and operational platform for company supervisors and managers at all levels.
Let partnering with MARC be one of your New Year’s Resolutions for 2025. It is one resolution you will keep and value, whether you lose that extra weight or exercise more – or not. Please check out the MARC “services” tab, give Gary Kleckner a call, and you can put a check mark by this resolution!
Gary Kleckner: 216-973-7323
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