The authors of the Changing for Good book suggest that an individual or organization not short-change the "preparation" stage, as described in “Preparation—A Necessary Step Prior to Taking Action.”

I've found that counsel hard to enforce, however.  Once a decision has been made in the "contemplation" stage to proceed, people tend to want to get on with it!  Fortunately, trial and error is a very powerful learning tool.  If a person jumps in with both feet and finds resistance, he or she can always try something different.

That presumes, of course, that the individual doesn't just give up and choose to put no more effort against the improvement.  That's the risk that is run with short-circuiting the preparation stage.

In this week’s article, I mention conducting an organizational health assessment.  Over the past few years, I've written four articles dealing with organizational health assessments.  If you want to see those articles, they are here:
--"Organizational Assessment--Part 1"
--"Organizational Assessment--Part 2"
--"Organizational Assessments"
--"Why Are We Evaluating the Health of Our Organization?"

Dennis

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