Advanced Search

Most change programs inside of companies don't work because they address content (the knowledge, structure, and data in a company) or process (the activities and behaviors), but they never address the context in which both of those elements reside. The source of people's action isn't what they know but how they perceive the world around them...Context can be an individual's mind-set or the organizational culture. It includes all of the assumptions and norms that are brought to the table. Context is perception, as opposed to facts or data. People don't go off and design their context -- they just inherit it.

Show me a great company and I'll show you one that has radically changed itself and is looking forward to the opportunity of doing so again.

It is extremely important that you show some insensitivity to your past in order to show the proper respect for the future.

People don't resist change. They resist being changed!

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin - more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

Any company that cannot imagine the future won't be around to enjoy it.

In any revolutionary technology, the pace of change is overestimated in the short run, and the magnitude of change is underestimated in the long run.

Life is change. Growth is optional.

Corollary: If the rate of external change exceeds our rate of internal growth we're eventually going to be changed.

We've long believed that when the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is when.

Training that produces tangible results starts by changing behaviour - which ultimately changes attitudes.

There is nothing more difficult than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Most people overestimate the effects of change in the short term, underestimate them in the long term and fail to spot where change will be greatest.

Managers are not good at managing change. Why? Because most managers are stewards and not leaders. They tend towards security, stability and predictability.

In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs we may be left without mercy and compassion. In rejecting change and risk, we often cheat ourselves of the quest. In denying suffering, we may never know our strength and our greatness.

People tend to support best that which they help to create.

Growth strategies do not fail because of the unknown -- they fail because managers are unwilling to confront what is known.

People change their behavior when they are motivated to do so, and that happens when you speak to their feelingsÂ… You need something, often visual, that helps produce the emotions that motivate people to move more than one inch to the left or one inch to the right. Great leaders are brilliant at this. They tell the kind of stories that create pictures in your mind and have emotional impactÂ… You get people to change less by giving them an analysis that changes their thinking than by showing them something that affects their feelings.

Orthodoxy is the enemy of renewal. The future gets created by heretics. And every organization must continuously work to redefine itself in ways that ensure that it does not get held hostage to its own moribund business model.

What actually drives the organization to change - irrespective of what a so-called leader or change leader does, in my view - is its pride in performance. You see change in many, many companies. It can come through fear. It can come through stimulation. It can come through the need to turn failure into success. But to my mind the most continuously effective way of changing any organization is to develop pride in performance, so that people themselves want to change.

And that pride should go as far as possible down the organization. So there are good aids and bad aids to change. Fear is a bad aid in an organization, but you sure can use it as a leader if you see performance under pressure. It won't help you in the long run, but it focuses people's minds. Pride, on the other hand, is a great long-run determinant of performance and change.

The prudent reformer, according to [Adam] Smith, will respect 'the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people,' and when he cannot establish what is right, 'he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong.' His goal is not to create the ideal, but to 'establish the best that the people can bear.'

There's basically a three-stage process for any transformation. One, diagnosis - understanding customers' aspirations and the gap between that and where they are today. Two, staged experiences - designing the exact set of experiences that will close the gap. And three, follow-through - ensuring that the transformation takes hold, and that the aspiration continues to be met over time. That's where most consulting companies fail today - no follow-through! And of course key to all of it is customization, for it is customizing the experience that turns it into a transformation!

There are always two parties-the party of the past and the party of the future; the establishment and the movement.

Turning complex issues and opportunities into effectively simple - as opposed to simplistic or easy - constructs is truly the managerial art form of this new millennium. Instead of seeking "best" or "optimal" solutions to managerial problems, organizations and the people who run them have to become more creative about how they manage clarity and simplicity. Spending an extra two or three weeks on making a project definition simpler or more accessible can save months of time in rework and maintenance from casually accepting a definition that the people actually doing the work find too complex.

To tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality, which produced it, is left standing, then the rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There is so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

When discrete techniques (such as JIT, simultaneous engineering, supplier quality audits) are applied to enterprises with neither the philosophy nor the organization to accept them, they fail to produce results. The same is true of process automation or automated information systems. Philosophy and organization must precede technique.

If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less.

The success stories I am familiar with have involved treating behavioral change as a marketing campaign. They shook the dust off their consumer marketing textbooks and used the classic techniques of brand management and communication and incentives to promote the hell out of the change to the people inside the organization.

We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders. This indifference arises in part from fear of their adversaries who were favoured by the existing laws, and partly from the incredulity of men who have no faith in anything new that is not the result of well-established experience. Hence it is that, whenever the opponents of the new order of things have the opportunity to attack it, they will do it with the zeal of partisans, whilst the others defend it but feebly, so that it is dangerous to rely upon the latter.

When rapid or radical change is called for, executives must turn to the networks within their organization. Key positions in the network mobilize it to flexibly adapt to the exigencies of the moment. Three prototypical patterns emerge. The first pattern is the hub, as in a 'hub and spoke' system on a bicycle wheel. This pattern represents an optimal distribution system for centralizing work processes. The second pattern is the gatekeeper that is positioned on critical pathways connecting hubs to each other. These gatekeepers serve as important links or bridges within an organization. The third pattern is the pulsetaker, someone who is maximally connected to everyone via the shortest routes. Pulsetakers have their finger on the pulse of the organization and know what everyone is thinking and feeling. If one adds these patterns together, the DNA of a network is revealed. This cultural code is a highly structured form of interaction at the core of any network.