Change and Sweaters.. Really?

J Crew lays off corporate staff in part because they selected the wrong sweaters to order. It seems the Tippi was the popular one this year and the ill-fitting Tilly smothered 10% of J Crew’s corporate staff. “We are making meaningful and strategic changes across our organization to better position us for future growth," J. Crew chairman and CEO Millard Drexler said in a statement. "While many of these decisions were difficult, they are necessary." At the core it’s all about change.

Companies all around the world make critical decisions, decisions that affect their future and something as small as a sweater today, could be as big as a lay off tomorrow.  Before they got to the sweater, I am sure there were lots of changes that already took place. There were changes in leadership, maybe changes in ordering process, changes in policy or new product launches.   All of these changes come with dips in performance, as the organization gets up to speed or tries to execute and all are impacted by the three performance dip success factors…Culture, capacity and people.

Many times these difficult decisions could be avoided if only organizations would leverage culture, capacity and people more.    They are the three most important factors in any change and yet they are also, the three factors that organizations focus on the least, making change hard.. Damn hard.

Why have we missed leveraging our most important resources in change? Change is the center of everything we do, are or are becoming.   Every employee, customer and group around the world is dealing with some change effort...individually, organizationally or culturally.   But more and more we are preparing people less and less. We have moved the boat forward on the practical side of change aka the change management side.   We have the right charts, data, consultants and communication plans, but we miss the very thing that sinks the change ship. The human side of change.   Our misses can be chalked up to thinking the change management plan took care of the human side and in reality it doesn’t.

I am sure J Crew had a plan and strategy for ordering the right sweaters and I wonder if that plan involved their people at all levels.   Did they ask the sales clerk, the person closest to the customer what sweaters they should focus on?   Does their culture support speaking up to leadership when a decision might not be the right one? Or do the lower “ranks” keep their mouth shut and just go with the flow, even though the “sweater” wouldn’t even be something they would buy.   Is fear at the core of their culture or is it healthy conflict, human change and challenging the status quo.  Did they look at their culture, capacity and people enough?

If change is at the core of everything, and everything is what drives our creativity, decisions and results, then we have to get a better handle on leveraging our cultures, capacity and our people or be smothered by our own ill fitting sweater.

FREE Webinar- Friday 8/14-  Approved for Certification Credit for HRCI/SHRM

 Learn more about the human side of change from Tabetha in an upcoming free webinar, sponsor by Terra Staffing Group, this Friday, August 14th, at 10:00 PDT/1:00 EST. You can registrar at https://www.terrastaffinggroup.com/free---resources/webinars/change-the-missing-link/

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