Mapping Projects Against Commitment It takes a drawing to see how the roll-out plan of an ERP implementation and the stages of commitment go hand in hand. Building further on last week’s post about Daryl Conner’s 8 stages of commitment, I forgot to tell that there is another good use we can make of this model. Now that we have checked the phases and thresholds against the stages of social architecture, it’s time to see how they can be a guideline throughout our projects. In the below drawing I have attempted to match the 8 stages of commitment on the typical project phases of an ERP roll-out. Some remarkable conclusions can be made when we look at that drawing: The phases of project setup and design are both below the disposition threshold and the level of commitment we can expect during those phases goes no further than contact or awareness (reality check: I have known this to be true in my world).
Espiner's Berlin: Christiane F and the children of U-Bahnhof Weinmeisterstraße - In English - Welt 12.05.2011 11:56 Uhr Heroin and Berlin, that seemed to be co-dependents to our Columnist Mark Espiner. Now he wants to find out more about the current drug-scene. At U8's station Weinmeisterstraße he meets a girl who is addicted for years. Recently, I haven’t been able to get heroin off my mind. Christiane F was the film that first introduced me to Berlin. It was pre-wallfall heroin chic with Bowie thrown in – which naturally won it a fashionable following in the UK. But the thing that really put heroin on my radar wasn’t Zoo station, but the U8’s Weinmeister Strasse stop. I had noticed that down the road from my regular cafe was another one for addicts run by Caritas. It had a homely, welcoming atmosphere. But what about Weinmeister Strasse, I ask. I asked Reno if I could go with him on his street work rounds. Sarah (name changed) is 20. So we arrange an evening at a cafe on Alexanderplatz. “I want to stop these fucking shit drugs,” she says. She’s never been a prostitute she says.
Blameless PostMortems and a Just Culture Posted by jallspaw | Filed under engineering, people Last week, Owen Thomas wrote a flattering article over at Business Insider on how we handle errors and mistakes at Etsy. I thought I might give some detail on how that actually happens, and why. Anyone who’s worked with technology at any scale is familiar with failure. Failure cares not about the architecture designs you slave over, the code you write and review, or the alerts and metrics you meticulously pore through. So: failure happens. Maybe they should be fired. This is the traditional view of “human error”, which focuses on the characteristics of the individuals involved. We don’t take this traditional view at Etsy. A Blameless Post-Mortem What does it mean to have a ‘blameless’ Post-Mortem? Well, maybe. Having a Just Culture means that you’re making effort to balance safety and accountability. Having a “blameless” Post-Mortem process means that engineers whose actions have contributed to an accident can give a detailed account of:
Implications for Practitioners Using the Burning-Platform Metaphor | Conner Partners With the previous three posts as a foundation, the following implications may be helpful for change practitioners who wish to use the burning-platform metaphor in their work. 1. When real burning-platform urgency is at hand (due to either current or anticipated problems or opportunities), it means people believe the penalty for not realizing the intended outcomes is significantly higher than the investment for doing so. - Current problems attract attention more easily but they usually provide only limited options. - Anticipated opportunities are the hardest to convince people to accept because it often looks as if something is being fixed that isn’t broken. - Timing is important. - With true business imperatives, commitment is inevitable…the issue is whether the determination to take action will come forward in time to be meaningful. 2. - The fact that a burning-platform-type situation is scary doesn’t mean fear is at the heart of the unfolding dynamics. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Heroin: art and culture's last taboo | Television & radio | The Observer One of the easiest places to find heroin in Paris is in the streets in and around the Gare du Nord, a stone's throw away from the Eurostar terminal. I know about this place partly because I live in Paris and I am a frequent Eurostar traveller, and partly because this is where Google sent me when I typed in the request "Where to find heroin in Paris". Apparently the most popular spot for dealing is the rue Ambroise-Paré which contains a series of entrances to underground car parks where users can shoot up in relative privacy. The place permanently stinks of piss and is under constant police surveillance, as dealers and clients scurry back and forth between their hiding places. You can watch all of this action, nibbling on a snack and sipping champagne, from the front end of the Eurostar VIP Lounge which backs on to the street. In fact although there are plenty of drugs around the Gare du Nord there is not much real heroin. This is true. "No, not at all," she says.
The U.S. Digital Services Playbook The Beliefs that Built a Global Brewer - James Allen by James Allen | 11:52 AM April 27, 2012 Anheuser Busch InBev (AB InBev) announced its annual financial results this month and they are impressive, especially for a company with roots as a small brewer in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Now the largest beer company in the world, AB InBev reported a double digit EBITDA growth rate and almost 30% growth in earnings per share. And yet, in announcing those numbers, management confessed: “We know we can do better. That’s AB InBev in a nutshell: a relentless focus on achieving bottom line results, coupled with a ‘desire to dream.’ Observers tend to overlook the “dream” talk and chalk up AB InBev’s extraordinary success to its relentless cost cutting culture. To understand what made AB InBev — a descendant of multiple mergers and acquisitions — the success story it is today, let’s trace the lineage of this ‘desire to dream’ through its complex family tree. Expanding rapidly throughout South America, AmBev soon became the third largest brewer in the world.
Toxic 'e-waste' dumped in poor nations, says United Nations | Global development | The Observer Millions of mobile phones, laptops, tablets, toys, digital cameras and other electronic devices bought this Christmas are destined to create a flood of dangerous "e-waste" that is being dumped illegally in developing countries, the UN has warned. The global volume of electronic waste is expected to grow by 33% in the next four years, when it will weigh the equivalent of eight of the great Egyptian pyramids, according to the UN's Step initiative, which was set up to tackle the world's growing e-waste crisis. Last year nearly 50m tonnes of e-waste was generated worldwide – or about 7kg for every person on the planet. Once in landfill, these toxic materials seep out into the environment, contaminating land, water and the air. An indication of the level of e-waste being shipped to the developing world was revealed by Interpol last week. The failure to recycle is also leading to shortages of rare-earth minerals to make future generations of electronic equipment.
Why HR Really Does Add Value - Brian Hults In light of today’s economic volatility and uncertainty every aspect of business is being re-examined for its value in creating and sustaining profitable growth. I’ve worked in human resources for over 25 years, the past six with Newell Rubbermaid, and this is not a new endeavor for me. Throughout my career, I have consistently faced the question, “How does HR add value in a business?” Adding legitimacy to this skepticism are new technologies that enable automation of routine transactions, offshoring and shared service organizations that specialize in managing many tactical elements of HR. In this world flush with cheaper ways to fulfill traditional HR tasks, is HR becoming obsolete? Early in my career I was fortunate to help a large manufacturer and distributor of construction and agricultural equipment change the way it went to market in North America. This success is an example of how, when properly applied and executed, HR can have a significant and measurable impact on a company.
Homegrown in Hackney: Sophie Heawood lives off the land in E8 - ES Magazine - Life & Style I said yes, since it would only be a week, and I wasn’t emptying my house, just seeing how much I could find in my hood. Not a great deal, I presumed. My daughter and I would just forage a bit of sourdough bread from the E5 Bakehouse, show willing at a farmers’ market or allotment on the weekend, and be home in time for our respective Peppa Pig and Facebook addictions, since nothing with a plug on it could possibly be made round here. Indeed, the only signs of Hackney’s industrial past in Victoria Park Village are estate agents advertising £1.2 million luxury flats in nostalgia complexes called things like The Old Oakum Workhouse for Foundlings and Rats. But beyond that I suspected this project was doomed. Until I find out that, on the way to Westfield, Hackney Wick has many more factories than I realised. Sophie outside the borough's theatre Then there is food. And there is so much booze available. ‘Sooo great for her brain development!’ Photographs by Carsten Windhorst
Five Questions That Should Shape Any Change Program - Scott Keller and Colin Price by Scott Keller and Colin Price | 11:48 AM December 2, 2011 Most organizations will shrink or disappear in the long term: only a third of excellent companies remain excellent for decades, and when organizations try to transform themselves, even fewer succeed. But as economic, political, social, and technological change continue to accelerate, and competitive pressure grows more intense, leaders can’t afford those odds. The likeliest way to overcome them, we found as we wrote Beyond Performance, is to address the underlying problem: organizations that focus too much on short-term financial performance, at the expense of organizational health, are those that most typically need transformational change; but, unfortunately, the change programs they create are similarly shortsighted. Change programs that succeed, we’ve seen, put an equal emphasis on both performance and health in answering five basic questions that should shape any change program. 1) Where do we want to go? 4. 5.
SuchThatCast - Philosophers' Podcast | Get to know some of the most interesting and influential philosophers of today Elisabeth Goodman's Blog | Enhancing team effectiveness through process improvement, knowledge management and change management Starbucks tea house: can the coffee giant make a decent cuppa? This week Starbucks opened its first tea house, the Teavana Fine Teas + Tea Bar, in the Upper East Side, New York. While Teavana has been in existence as a chain of tea shops since 1997, this is the first opening since the ubiquitous coffee company acquired the brand just under a year ago. "Tea has been a part of Starbucks heritage since 1971," says CEO Howard Schultz, claiming the new offering "elevates the tea experience in the same way we've done for coffee." So will the Starbucks touch indeed do for tea what they did for coffee? And will it march into high streets the world over? This latest venture is, they say, in response to a 16% increase in American interest in tea over the past five years. There's a widespread view that when Starbucks marched into the UK in 1998, there were relatively few decent independent coffee shops across the country, and some argue that the chains have nurtured a taste for better coffee in the UK. Comins Tea House, Dorset Leaf, Liverpool Eteaket, Edinburgh