Don’t wait for the right time to change. If you know you are not getting the results you deserve or are not positioned to stay competitive in today’s market, do not procrastinate. There is no more perfect time to change than NOW because any hesitation could be fatal to your business. While you ponder, your competition is executing to accelerate their results.

Don’t revisit decisions. Good governance includes 3 winning things: 1) a clearly defined strategy and set of objectives to which all are aligned; 2) clear roles and responsibilities to ensure issues are escalated and resolved appropriately and quickly (and once) and decisions are made appropriately and quickly (and once); and 3) guiding principles are documented to be used as guardrails when the team is at an impasse.

Define your business objectives. To implement ERP by XX date is not a business objective. Is meeting the date the goal or is realizing business benefits from the investment the goal? Clearly articulate the new results you expect then build, execute and measure towards those.

Create the environment for change. How change able or change ready is your organization? What is your history of change success? What do your engagement scores tell you about your employees’ capacity for change? Are your people-leaders skilled at both leading change and keeping current performance high? Are your executives already modeling the behavior you expect to accelerate change and achieve extraordinary results or are they unknowingly creating barriers? Can you articulate what a change able or change ready organization looks like?

Reduce the noise to set your teams up for success. Are you clearly articulating the organization’s priorities and have you removed all competing priorities? Do your actions back up what you expect or are your messages contradictory? Listen for the cues that your leaders and their teams have too much on their plates and re-articulate key messages, using multiple channels. Continually check in to assess progress, confirm adequate resources and budgets, and look for leading indicators to affirm you are headed in the right direction.

Measure leading not lagging indicators. Decide up front what success looks like then back into it with measurable leading indicators so you can course correct as you go vs. delay results or worse, cancel projects because you can no longer afford to fly blindly.

Don’t neglect the middle for the ending. It is the success of the journey that will allow you to do the next change by building the muscle change able organizations need. Attention to the flow-of-work is critical to achieving results – even mundane everyday practices can make a huge difference in your speed of change. We are talking about things like running effective meetings and onboarding programs; establishing clear accountability; encouraging co-collaboration and engagement; providing impactful leadership development programs and succession planning; and ensuring senior leaders stay on message. These practices go a long way towards creating a healthy culture of continuous change – an environment that instills trust in the core things allows employees to more easily navigate the chaos of change.

Don’t expect perfection. Get feedback on the building blocks along the way vs. waiting for the big deal at the end. Iterate and celebrate often to keep creativity and energy high.

Get in the habit of asking ‘what 1 thing can I do differently to accelerate this?’ Where there is friction – don’t procrastinate, address it. Accelerate its removal. It could require having a crucial conversation with a teammate or challenging a policy that has been in place for decades. Don’t accept friction – eradicate it.

Capture and reuse your knowledge assets for the future so you don’t waste energy reinventing the wheel. Can you point others to how you did something – retrace your steps? How often are your teams starting from scratch? What can you put in place to accelerate forward progress by accessing knowledge assets when needed?