You don’t always need big initiatives or expensive training to bring people along on a change journey. Sometimes the difference comes from a tiny adjustment in how you work. These tiny levers can have a big effect, especially if you foster a team culture that seeks them and embraces them.

https://swiy.co/go-tiny-levers

What small changes are you making that could make a big difference in your workplace?

I was recently participating in a panel discussion about the future-ready skills we need for our workforce now and in the future. The discussion turned to the need to embrace diversity in our teams, especially generational diversity. Younger people often bring fresh perspectives and expertise, but we also don’t want to lose the experience, good judgement, and wisdom of more experienced team members.

The moderator of the panel, Keith, asked the audience,

“Can anybody in the room share an example of bridging the generational gap?”

One participant, Isabella, shared a story from a previous workplace.

As part of a digital transformation process, they introduced online dashboards to show performance of various technical processes. These dashboards improved the visibility of data, but two of the old, more experienced managers struggled to immediately grasp what a dashboard was showing. So, in a meeting, when they saw a series of dashboards, they missed the first few results, and thus lost important information. As a result, they couldn’t make well-informed comments and discussions about overall performance.

So what could you do?

Do you send those people off to digital training courses?

Do you give them mentoring from younger people?

Do you get them to do job shadowing?

Do you give them some other form of professional development?

Well, yes, all of those things are useful.

But Isabella said they did something much simpler.

In a meeting, when they switched to the new dashboard, they stopped ... just for a few seconds ... to give everybody the chance to see, understand, and absorb the information. And then they moved on.

Those five seconds were enough. That’s all it took to get everybody on board.

I love this story because it shows that sometimes, it only takes a few seconds to help somebody.

Sometimes, to bring people along on any change journey, you do need to invest a lot of time, effort, resources, and money. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But sometimes you don’t.

Sometimes all it takes is a small change.

So, look for the small changes — the quick wins — that can make a big difference.

For more, join my free online presentation next week, called “Keep the Change”, which is all about building a culture of change in your team and your organisation. I’m sure you’ll get some really practical things you can take away and put into place immediately.

Register for the virtual masterclass:

https://swiy.co/go-tiny-levers

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