While change is useful, it is often misdirected. "Maximum performance cannot be achieved unless people’s significance is openly acknowledged." say Les Carter and Jim Underwood in their book The Significance Principle. "Businesses spend millions of dollars to improve corporate performance. While they must give attention to changing trends and organizational efficiency and improve procedures, they will ultimately fail if they ignore the significance of their people!"

Spending a lot of money to install an ABM system does not insure success. Some organizations have spent millions for an ABM computer system (noun) but have not achieved an ABM payback (verb).  One reason is the misconception that ABM reports are exclusively for management’s use. Activity Accounting reports should be inclusive, not exclusive.  Give ABM reports to all employees.  Train everyone "how to" read, interpret and use activity accounting reports.  Cost effective ABM training is available on the Internet at www.LearnABM.com. (Acknowledge each employee’s knowledge of their work (activities) and the ideas they have to improve it.

In my article "Activity Appraisal- Part 1", I explained a method that managers can use with their employees to appraise performance and prioritize activity improvement.  It all starts with asking each employee "Which activity would you be most interested improving?"   Employee responses to this question will fall into the same three categories discussed above:

1. If they respond piously "I wouldn’t change a thing", they are either not interested in continuous improvement or they are concerned that an honest answer will result in a rebuke or loss of job. A pious response is a punitive response. Employees are concerned about the punitive damages that may result from truthfully answering the question. Senior management has the primary role in resolving this concern e.g. tell employees whether waste will be eliminated or re-deployed. Honest answers result from confidence in the inquirer.
2. If they respond plurally "I’d like to change all my activities", there is either pent up frustration with the current work environment or you have an enthusiastic employee that is totally committed to continuous improvement. Either way, capitalize on their response. Use the techniques discussed in the "Activity Appraisal – Part 1" article to define action plans to reduce costs e.g. prioritize the activities by magnitude of cost.
3. If they respond personally "I’m willing to help improve all of our departmental activities", you have a positive ingredient for cost improvement. Personal commitment leads to action. Action leads to change. In my book "Pryor Convictions: 31 Insights into ABM" I discuss the power of multiplication. If you improve ONE activity in ONE department and define ONE improvement idea that results in ONE thousand dollars of savings for ONE month, the total savings is $1,000. If you increase it to TWO, the savings increase to $32,000. With THREE you achieve $243,000! In other words, if all your employees are willing to get personally involved in the activity improvement process, the sky’s the limit.