Teams that get little support and development often tend to be those delivering smaller degrees of change for their organisations. There is a parallel in healthcare. Those that are self-taught and get their information from books and the internet can only be expected to deliver basic healthcare and treatment. This is all well and good if you are only dealing with minor cuts and bruises but what if the patient (or in this case the business) requires something more significant. Who would want invasive surgery to be performed by those individuals?
In business we have to decide whether we want our team to perform basic healthcare on our organisation or something much more skilled that can make a step change in the future health of the enterprise. What can happen here is that limited development of the team yields limited results and so the expectations of the change team can be muted as a result. As a business leader you should expect significant results (greater than 5 times the cost) from your change team. But you should also expect to have to ensure they are at the right levels of capability with the right levels of support.
Imagine having truly capable ‘Lean Surgeons’ that can perform the highest degrees of transformative change on your business. What could be possible then? In our experience these really are hard to find individuals. If you have one you should reward them well and work to engage them in your business. The evidence that you have one will be obvious if you want it to be, they will always be able to demonstrate their return on investment.
If you do have an underperforming change team, then do not lay the blame on them. More often than not it is a result of the development and challenge that is put to them in the delivery of the improvements required by the business. This requires an improvement vision and then structured development. Oftentimes both academically in these tools and techniques as well as coaching in the ‘live’ environment.