How to Manage Change

1. Company X wants to improve their entire culture.
2. Krrrrraaazy consultants tell they need a complete overhaul to running their company to improve profits by 5%.
3. Company X enacts changes.

Company X fails like a freak as people can't respond to changes.

You + Favorite Website

1. You go to your favorite website.
2. You see its new design.
3. You hate it and wish they could revert the design to the old.

HAPPENS EVERYDAY TO PEOPLE THIS SEC OH YEAH

People hate change because unfamiliarity breeds contempt.

• You feel more comfortable with your friends because you've developed relationships with them.
• You don't respond to your friends' friends as much because you're unfamiliar with them.

Enacting change in a company is similar to forcing little kids to make brand new friends:

1. Team X isn't used to the newly-created low-base-high-bonus pay system so they hate it.
2. Productivity tumbles.
3. Company dies.

How do you enact change?

Introduce it.

Give a preview.

How did a multi-billion-dollar website incorporate change to its homepage?

• Yahoo gave people a preview of their new homepage.
• Yahoo let people gradually get more familiar with the new look.
• With increasing familiarity to the new look, people became more responsive to the new look.

Then, BAM, they accepted it when the new look went full-time.

To get peeps familiar with change, instead of having the why-do-we-have-to-make-new-friends when-our-old-friends-were-so-much-better feelings, give a preview:

• "You're getting a preview of our new bonus system. You'll start getting a teeny-tiny bonus for every X thing you do next week. This bonus will increase as we progress."

SHABAMDIZZZLE.

Change gradually.

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