A Good Way to Change a Corporate Culture - Peter Bregman. By Peter Bregman | 1:53 PM June 25, 2009 “I’d like to talk to you about a big project,” the woman told me on the phone. “We need to change our culture.” She was a senior leader in a professional services firm, where people really are their most important asset. Only it turns out the people weren’t so happy. Theirs was a very successful firm with high revenues, great clients, and hard working employees. But employee satisfaction was abysmally low and turnover rates were staggeringly high. This firm had developed a reputation for being a terrible place to work. He paused and then continued, “I’m not proud of that story, but it’s how we’ve always operated the firm.” Such a simple question. But a culture is a complex system with a multitude of interrelated processes and mechanisms that keep it humming along. Performance reviews and training programs define the firm’s expectations.
“Why do you want to change the culture?” He had to think for a few moments. That was good enough for me. Change Management vs. Change Leadership -- What's the Difference? Blog | Conner Partners. September 17, 2013 Since 2009, I have authored more than 70 series (200+ separate posts) under the Change Thinking banner. I have much more to say about why I feel who we are as change practitioners is at least as important as what we do. How we show up when serving our clients—the character and presence we bring forward—is a neglected aspect of practicing our craft and I plan to keep blogging about it for as long as you continue to tell me you are interested in the subject.
Beginning today, however, I am making a change to the pace of posting on the blog. Keep Reading. Improvisation May Be the Key to Successfully Managing Change, Says MIT. Improvisation May Be the Key to Successfully Managing Change, Says MIT January 10 2012 by ChiefExecutive.net Agility , flexibility, improvisation – a company’s ability to quickly change is crucial to its long-term success. MIT’s Leadership Center published an article by professor Wanda J. Orlikowski that equates a successful company to an orchestra. The CEO, conductor, leads a complex group of artists to make beautiful music.
Sometimes, however, the conductor needs to let go and let its skilled and creative musicians lead. The same is said for an organization; improvisation is necessary to adaptation to uncertain and changing business conditions. Orlikowski says, “Organizations that stay flexible take advantage of new opportunities, explore new ways of working, and resolveunanticipated consequences.” Read: Jazz-Inspired: Manage Change by Improvising. Building Change Capability: A CMP Conversation | Conversations of Change. At our most recent Change Management Professionals meetup held at SHK we were delighted to see some new faces – people who worked on the peripheral of change management or wanted to develop further skills.
One of these new faces (Aaron Robinson of Ubeetech) volunteered to do a write up of the event — and what a write up it is! Bravo Aaron! I’ve included the write up as download at the bottom of the post * . Thanks also to Rebecca Cattran for hosting, and SHK for providing the venue. Introduction Recently I attended the July 18 – Melbourne Change Management Professionals Meet up, allured by the promise of Building Change Capability over a glass of red wine. Below are some of the notes from our Meet up and I can’t wait until the next one. No Trust = Minimal and ineffective change Not to oversimplify the whole evening into one overriding theme, but the importance of “trust” for effective and meaningful change management was right up there. We’re getting to the bottom of it!
How are we doing? 17 Must Ask Questions for Planning Successful Projects. 16 Mar2008 Why do some projects proceed without a hitch, yet others flounder? One reason may be the type and quality of the questions people ask at the very start. Below are 17 insightful queries that can expose the uncertain aspects of your project, and thereby help you avoid expensive surprises later on. 1. How Would You Describe Your Project? Explain as expressively as possible the ultimate, "big picture" vision and purpose of your completed endeavour. 2. What are you trying to accomplish? 3. Examples of audiences or beneficiaries include: Clients, customers, customers' customers, local communities, wildlife, students, and specific population segments. 4.
Examples include: Books, publications, studies, reports, manuals, video, audio, multimedia productions, tools, instructional materials, graphics, software and information systems, websites, databases, widgets, and special equipment. 5. 6. For example, will you start by researching your audiences' needs? 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 360 Blog: Leading Change: Passionate peo... How does a company unlock the power and passion of talented employees around the globe to accelerate a transformational vision?
That’s what I wondered three years ago when I volunteered to be a member of the Guiding Coalition at NetApp. I discovered that there is a fantastic way to bring more people together to act as change leaders, and it is one of the most incredible activities I’ve been involved in during my career. Back in 2009, Rob Salmon and the Field Operations leadership team decided to pair NetApp’s winning culture with an innovative framework for successful transformation that leverages the urgency and passion of employees across the business. Collaborating with Harvard’s respected professor Dr. The Guiding Coalition (GC) brings people together from across the company who operate as a team outside the organizational hierarchy.
Every member has volunteered to participate knowing that they will need to do this work in addition to their day jobs. Cure Your Company's Allergy to Change - Brad Power. By Brad Power | 10:00 AM August 30, 2012 Many organizations suffer from a tragic pattern: The chief executive officer launches a new change program with great fanfare and intentions, only to shelve it a few years later with little to show for great expenditures of time and consulting fees. How can you break this cycle? Consider a health insurance company that has been struggling with change programs gone haywire for quite some time. A few years ago, the chief operating officer launched a customer quality initiative to improve six core processes and assigned executives to “own” each process. But this wasn’t the only improvement initiative to peter out in the company. This company has demonstrated a repeated pattern of 3- to 5-year cycles where it launches a change program, takes awhile for managers to get behind it, and then more time to get it funded.
How do companies get trapped in such tragic change cycles? Lack of ambition was a fifth problem. Leading Change: Three Major Misconceptions That Hinder Innovation. These days almost every organization is discussing the need for innovation. There is no CEO that talks with me about the company’s strategic drivers without mentioning ‘building more innovation power’. Every government is claiming innovation to be one of its key economic drivers. Innovation is hot. And of course it makes sense! In my previous post I described the difference between focus on sustainable value creation versus focus on short term financial growth, and how the latter can jeopardize a company’s future success.
It is clear that innovation has become vital for value creation. The point is, there is so much talk, discussion, and buzz going on around innovation that it makes me wonder: do we all really talk about the same thing? 1. There are many definitions of innovation. “The act of introducing something new” (the American heritage dictionary) / “A new idea, method or device” (Webster online) / “Change that creates a new dimension of performance” (Peter Drucker) 2. 3.