Compensation Cafe: At Last, the Secret of Successful Implementation

It involves a chocolate chip cookie. Seriously. Stick with me on this, there's a video from You Tube with a New York Times reporter involved.

Each business cycle, you ask employees to reexamine their objectives and behaviors in order to adapt them to the business priorities of that year. They get rewarded when achieve their objectives. They get rewarded more when they meet their objectives, plus their behaviors indicate that they will repeat that achievement in coming years as well as grow and learn.

That's why implementation is so important. You don't want to get in the way of people adapting to the new business priorities. In fact, you want to help employees make the change by following the first few steps of effective implementation:

Make them aware it is time to change
Explain the rationale for the change
Inspire them to accept responsibility for the part they play

If employees take on the responsibility for the new business priorities, doesn't the need for implementation and change management come to an end?

We often develop our implementation plan that way, but that's short sighted. In fact, if we leave it there everyone ends up frustrated. Working hard to achieve objectives but ill-equipped to actual get there. Because real change can only occur if employees change their habits, with your help.

What have we been missing? I could go into elaborate detail on change management theory, but really!

I ran into a guy with a simple, concise way of sharing the secret on yesterday's Fresh Air program on NPR. New York Times reporter, Charles Duhigg, talked about his book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. He did a great job of explaining how hard we hang on to habits, and how much change can be accomplished when we let go. He talks about the importance of rewards, so he's talking our language. Take a look at this explanation.

Yep, to implement our pay-for-performance programs effectively, we need to help employees -- and our organization -- change long-established habits and replace them with new behaviors. To create an effective plan for change, our analysis needs to be as subtle as the chocolate chip cookie study in this video.

This is another good illustration of the inadequacy of once-a-year compensation communications. It's not that the communications aren't well crafted or that we haven't worked hard on them. It's that they aren't built to accomplish change. (Skeptical? Check out the book if you want examples of companies who have focused on breaking habits and succeeded.)

We are all going to stay frustrated with our efforts at implementation until we accept responsibility FOR HELPING ACHIEVE THE BUSINESS STRATEGY, not just the merit increase matrix.

And we are all going to feel more effective at implementation when our plans move beyond tactics to accomplishing change. You can bet a ton of chocolate chip cookies on it!

BTW, if you want to hear Terry Gross' full Fresh Air interview of Charles Duhigg on NPR, here you go.

This is the last episode in a series on research findingings that can help you improve Implementation. There's loads more to talk about, and I will because it is so important. Companies that are more effective at implementation -- of business strategy, pay for performance, change, communication -- deliver higher Total Shareholder Return.

Here are the earlier topics. It's been fun!

Margaret O'Hanlon is founder and principal of re:Think Consulting. She has decades of experience teaming up with clients to ensure great Human Resource ideas deliver valuable business results. Margaret brings deep expertise in total rewards communications and change management to the dialog at the Café. Before founding re:Think Consulting, she was a Principal in Total Rewards Communications and Change Management with Towers Perrin. Margaret is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), Pacific Plains Region. She earned her M.S. and Ed.S. in Instructional Technology at Indiana University. Creative writing is one of her outside passions, along with Masters Swimming.