What if your unintended consequences were as big as the intended ones? This happens in our Viral Change™ programmes all the time and could happen in any other of your organizational initiatives. I am not sure we always capture them.
If nobody sees them is perhaps because they were not in the KPI list.
Intended consequences of a particular Viral Change™ programme: to create a culture of X , by scaling up a particular set of behaviours. Large scale behavioural and cultural change with objectives X,Y,X
Unintended consequences, end of year 1 (never explicit in day 1 or declared objectives), all real, none theoretical:
Pride
Sense of belonging
Spontaneous collaboration
Can I help you? Multiplied like hell
Sense of ‘agency’ (I can do that)
Readiness to change, again and again
Employee engagement, the real one, not the crap one
Legacy: this is what I leave behind
This is what I will tell my children
Now I believe in this company
I don’t need permission anymore
Peer to peer power
Collective leadership
No tolerance for negativity anymore. It’s not a managerial issue, it’s a peer issue
It’s for us, not just the company
Fulfillment
The best I’ve done