“CHANGE” is a dirty word in business. When you say it to your staff they seize up with an “Uh-oh!” or concerns about how these changes will affect them. “Will I still have my job?”

Better to approach this subject with terms like “Enhancements” or “Improvements that will better our working conditions and increase our compensation.” These are realities the staff can more easily digest. In fact, this approach tells the truth without causing upset.

It is a fact that when one begins to bring order to an area, the first thing that happens is that disorder shows up and can seduce the attention of people in the area.

The reason that most companies fail in their first year is because this principle is not well understood. The people in the area run off trying to resolve all of the disorder and take their attention off of the order going in. Soon, the area is buried in disorder, and any hope for viability is thus swept away.

The trick is to focus on the order being created, and stay focused until the disorder has discharged and the orderly activity remains.

The skilled executive must be willing to experience disorder and be willing to ignore it. Further, he must predict that it will occur, and not allow it to deflect his attention from the increasing order.

If you hate disorder, and fight disorder only, don’t ever try to bring order in to anything, for the resulting disorder will drive you crazy. Only if you can ignore disorder and understand this principal can you bring about a viable activity.

This brings us the warning about managing by statistics. As with any new system being installed, it will result in a short-term disorder as people get their minds around it. When you install this system in your business and ask your crew to track their productivity – an activity that has not been done before – you can expect disorder.

For example, a few staff might feel offended by the notion of tracking their own productivity and present complaints that “you don’t trust them.” They will say things like “I am not statistic!” In fact, there are usually people in any company who actually are carried on the shoulders of their teammates, and statistics threaten them with exposure. From them you will hear the loudest complaints.

In fact, as a manager you are only seeking predictable and orderly expansion, and in order to manage you need DATA. Statistics provide you this data. You are not on a witch-hunt or operating with any other motive – but may be accused of such by those with things to hide.

Therefore, before you embark on the installation of this managing by statistics regimen, you must well educate your staff on the nature of expansion and upon the Natural Laws that govern it. You are instituting a system that will allow everyone to do better than anyone is doing now, increasing revenues and pay and so on.

Well addressed, the crew will understand and embrace this new system.

Make no mistake; there will still be disorder, as the principle is a fundamental. And you will still have those carried on the shoulders of their teammates being quite upset by such a system.

How you deal with that is up to your better judgment, but there is a worse thing than temporary disorder, and that is not installing systems that improve the operation. There is a condition worse than training your people and having them leave, and that is not training them and having them stay.

Excellent staff who are productive enjoy monitoring their productivity and will relish this system as it allows them to improve and to realize their potential. It also opens the door for a stable system that allows accurate evaluation of competence that removes issues of “personal favorites.”

Thus, the right people can be identified for promotion, and everyone knows by their statistics the truth of their value to the team.