387 Posts Found

Widespread transformation always unleashes waves of collective fear, discontent, and doubt—emotions that often translate into vocal, and potentially more destructive, opposition. …If left unacknowledged, adversaries have the power to derail even the worthiest attempts at reform, and thus it is a leader’s responsibility to identify and, when necessary, neutralize his or her most powerful critics. But how is the person at the center of the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Nancy Koehn | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

To most leaders, the speed and flexibility that drive innovation lie at the opposite end of the spectrum from standardization and centralization, which promote efficiency and control risk. Not so. Rita Gunther McGrath’s research sheds light on agile organizations. Large companies that raise their income disproportionately, she found, have two main characteristics: they are innovative and experimental and can move quickly but also have consistent … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Mary Meaney, Scott Keller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Change Management, Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

In overcoming resistance to change and building support for change, leaders need to communicate an appealing vision of change in combination with a vision of continuity. Unless they are able to ensure people that what defines the organization’s identity — “what makes us who we are” — will be preserved despite the changes, leaders may have to brace themselves for a wave of resistance.

Content: Article | Author: Merlijn Venus | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Change Management

Authentic informal leaders (AILs) are not people in your organization who have been endowed with formal authority by title or by memo. Rather, they possess and exhibit certain leadership strengths such as the ability to do something important well and showing others how to do it (exemplars), or they demonstrate the skill of connecting people across the organization (networkers). Some AILs influence behavior by being … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Reid Carpenter | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

Rather than assuming critical thinkers are resisters, we would do better to treat them as guardians. Guardians see what needs to be protected, and the trust that can be destroyed by a broken promise or a shortcut. Who else will ask the hard questions? Guardians keep us honest in the face of self-delusion or blind spots. […] When you approach guardians as responsible, thinking adults … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Elizabeth Doty | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

What you need to do in a transformation is to get people to act differently. When people begin to act differently, they will begin to think differently.

Content: Quotation | Author: Doug Yakola | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Change Management

Six years ago, two executives new to their jobs led the strategic transition that remade McGraw-Hill into S&P Global.

Content: Case Study | Authors: Jack Callahan, John Berisford | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Change Management | Companies: McGraw-Hill, S&P Global

The change-management literature has long focused on the need to overcome resistance. But resistance can imply intent, when in reality people often revert to old behavior out of habit or instinct, reflecting old mind-sets that may persist even after an apparently successful initial transformation.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Alessandra Fantoni, Jacek Fabianowicz, Randy Cook, Stefan de Raedemaecker | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Large organizations have many different heartbeats, and change managers need to listen to them all.

Content: Article | Author: Quy Huy | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

Data science is becoming a reality for change management, and although it may not have arrived yet, it is time for organizations to get ready. The companies best positioned to change in the next decade will be the ones that set themselves up well now, by collecting the right kind of data and investing in their analytics capacity.

The key to building predictive models is knowing … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael L. Tushman | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Change Management

Analysis of high-stakes transformations reveals a few pragmatic lessons that increase the odds of meeting the organization’s objectives.

Content: Article | Authors: Benoît Maraite, Cornelia Piaia, Michael Bucy, Tony Fagan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management

Two senior executives from the global bank describe their recent journey.

Content: Case Study | Authors: Bart Schlatmann, Peter Jacobs | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

Human beings’ temporal awareness includes a personal, subjective sense of continuity between past, present and anticipated future. If that internal flow of events is crudely interrupted and nothing promises to restore it, we tend to resist. Even the most obviously necessary improvements will meet forceful opposition.

Content: Quotation | Author: Quy Huy | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

Why is it so hard for leaders to send clear, effective signals to followers? There are three main ways in which leaders too often send confusing signals to their organizations. Get them right, and you can signal clearly and effectively; fail to pay attention to how and what you are signaling in these three modes, and you will have confusion at best — and at … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Elsbeth Johnson | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Change Management

The benefits of agile are by now well known. Under agile development methodologies, IT organizations and product developers cocreate products and services with the business, rather than simply collecting feature specifications and throwing them back over the wall, as would happen under the waterfall development model. Teams can experiment with minimally viable products, test and learn from those prototypes, and ultimately deliver new software features … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Gerard Speksnijder, Santiago Comella-Dorda, Swati Lohiya | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management

Many executives believe organizational change is an inherently messy, chaotic process. Without a doubt, change can derail business. But that’s because leaders have been managing it using faulty assumptions and outdated mental models. Learn how today’s wealth of data and powerful analytics capabilities have uncovered predictable patterns of how organizational change unfolds.

Content: Article | Authors: Randy Wandmacher, Tim Gobran, Warren Parry | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Under nearly any circumstance, reorganizations consume a great deal of time and energy, including emotional energy. When proper communication plans are in place, though, leaders can at least reduce unnecessary anxiety and unproductive wheel-spinning. Planning should start long before employees get word of the changes, include constituents well outside the boundaries of the company, and extend far beyond the announcement of the concept design to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Rose Beauchamp, Stephen Heidari-Robinson, Suzanne Heywood | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.

Content: Quotation | Author: Richard Hooker | Subject: Change Management

Four key actions influence employee mind-sets and behavior. Here’s why they matter.

Content: Article | Authors: Bill Schaninger, Tessa Basford | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

It takes 30 years for a new idea to seep into the culture. Technology does not drive change. It is our collective response to the options and opportunities presented by technology that drives change.

Content: Quotation | Author: Paul Saffo | Subjects: Change Management, Innovation, IT / Technology / E-Business, Marketing / Sales