You have determined that your SMB or non-profit organization is ready for the sea change in its culture that performance excellence can require.
The key to successfully transforming your non-profit into a performance excellence organization is that management – which includes middle management through the Board of Directors – must buy-in and support it with actions and resources and not just lip service.
Management cannot wave a magic wand and declare the organization to now have a performance excellence culture. They must demonstrate their commitment to the changes that are coming by walking the talk. If the organization has a history of management repeatedly “implementing” the latest business management fad (management by objective, management by walking around, Baldrige Award, etc.), they may well react with “Oh no here we go again, another flavor of the month.” Everyone in the organization must understand that this is a process that takes a long time to complete, that management is aware of this and that they are going to stay the course.
Leading by example is the one of the best ways for management to show the organization that they are serious about change. In 1983 Corning Incorporated (then Corning Glass Works) introduced Total Quality Management. To train the employees, they created a Quality University that every employee had to attend. To demonstrate their commitment to TQM, the first employees to go through the university were the CEO, Vice Chairman, CFO and the three presidents. 30 years later, Corning’s management still openly demonstrates its support for performance excellence.
Even with management’s support, you must have the support of the employees also. They must be enabled and empowered to change the culture. They need to have the resources necessary to be able to actually transform the culture. These resources include training, tools and the environment that will provide employees with the ability to transfer management’s intent into real results. Training and tools are something that management can buy and provide to the employees. But the environment for successfully utilizing these resources must be created internally by management. If you invest the resources of time and money into training the employees and then release them into the same old work environment, you will have wasted your efforts.
In my experience when it comes to change management, the basic approach to take is change people or change people. If you are confronted with an individual who just rejects the changes, you have to either change their attitude towards the new ways or replace them (let them go). Neither of these is simple to accomplish. Be prepared to have the necessary processes and resources in place to handle the situation when it comes up and it will come up.
Process Improvement for Non-Profits 