Comfort zone by definition means familiar psychological state where people are at ease and (perceive they are) in control of their environment, experiencing low levels of anxiety and stress. There is nothing wrong about people being in comfort zone, but what this means for company, if it wants to grow, find more efficient ways of working etc. Does it mean, if there is bigger proportion of people who are happy with the current state at work and are not looking for any improvements, will lock the organization out from new opportunities?
People that have found their comfort zone in the company will keep the current operations running and stay loyal until existing state remain stable.
There is an opinion, that people who are just happy with how things are moving and are not looking for any change in the organization, may be a cause for various struggles for the organization to initiate changes. It is most possibly very true, but there is a good side of having people in the team that feel in comfort zone:
will stay loyal until the environment remains intact,
will keep operations running the way it supposed to run.
But as anywhere else, you need to keep the balance in the team, so it would not become stagnant because of the fact that people are not willing to change ways of working or look for better tools to use, as they are too comfortable with way it is.
Make sure that you have well balanced team to make team operations going, but at the same time willing to look for new exiting things to implement.
People who are in comfort zone can be grounding element for those who are crazy about trying new things on daily basis, just make sure that people with an apatite for change does not loose motivation because of the pushback they can get from the others. To have the right balance in the team, first and foremost try to understand what the reason is, why people do not want to try new ways: maybe it is because of lack of knowledge or maybe they feel not safe to experiment, because of previous experiences. To encourage people to scratch the surface on the settled ways of working, implement steps:
Create an environment where people have a scene for experimenting - encourage on weekly basis and greet the ones that tried something during team meetings and personal chats.
Encourage to learn something new - setup weekly gathering when whole team can listen in training remotely. The key here is that different team member should bring the online training that he or she is interested in on weekly basis, and everybody listens into it.
Maintain improvement backlog so the ones that are willing to get their hands dirty, but do not know what to do, would be able to pick the topic and work on it.
Show the difference between the improved way of working and the old way, so people would understand why it was beneficial to do it.
Setup motivational fund for the people who will implement improvements to make things work better. Just do not forget to have clear definition of done and evaluation rules.
Final thoughts.
People who are in comfort zone can be a good asset in the cases where there are no major changes or market moves which may impact organization operations. These people, if there is no turbulence, tend to be loyal and act as grounding element for the ones who may go crazy about the new features. But team build only from people who are happy the way it is, will not succeed and it should be balanced out with the ones who are more willing and ready to implement changes.
Commentaires