Terms of Engagement, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 9Promote Fairness

This is the hard part.

The new change management’s success rests on everyone’s willingness to embrace fairness. Without fairness, you can widen the circle of involvement, connect people to each other, create communities for action—and still fail. Change processes that don’t seem fair appear only to serve the interests of the elite. When this happens, change never gets off the ground and your organization ultimately fails.

Notions of fairness go beyond people’s experience with a particular change process. They extend into the organization as a whole. Fairness is the hallmark of productive societies. For example, the concept that everyone is equal under the law is enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of ...