Several of our colleagues have jetted off to warm and sunny destinations in the last few weeks. Sandy beaches and palm trees called their names, leaving the rest of us to the snow and cold.
Beach vacations always make me think of those ‘Wish You Were Here’ postcards. The ones where you can almost feel the warm breeze and the sand between your toes.
What if you could have the same thing for your team or organization? An image that draws them forward with longing.
In their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath talk about destination postcards. This is when you create a vivid image of the near future that shows people what is possible. By drawing people’s focus to an attractive destination, people will want to start doing the things necessary to get there. Instead of pushing people forward, they will feel pulled.
This may seem like a silly activity, after all, most of us focus on hard numbers and data to measure performance. However, Chip and Dan refer to a major study in the 1980s of corporate change efforts that found financial goals inspired successful change less well than did more emotional goals, such as the goal to provide better service to customers or to make more useful products.
When people are inspired by a clear picture of what things could be like (and feel like) for them it makes it easy for them to apply themselves, work together, and make the decisions necessary to get there.
As this year comes to a close, take the time to create a destination postcard for your team for 2023.
A TEAM HUMAN CONVERSATION
Fight workplace zombies in your organization and join Team Human! Gather a group of fellow workplace zombie hunters to discuss our most recent blog post. Use the questions below to kick start your conversation.
Where would you like to see the team at the end of 2023? What would a typical day look like?
What would it feel like to be part of your team?
What would you be focusing on that’s different from now?
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