Corporate Revolution: Unlock Your Culture’s Revolutionary Zeal

Advantage is transient but companies are sticky: That’s why smart strategy should start with your capabilities and then seek a market for them, rather than beginning from the pot of gold and hoping you can walk upon the rainbow to where you are. By the same token, in a conflict between strategy and culture, culture eventually wins. Always.

That being the case, the only way to … [ Read more ]

Creating Change in Mindset and Behavior

Most leaders don’t realize that mindset and behavior are the twin drivers of change.

George Bernard Shaw

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Charles Handy, Marshall Goldsmith

As Charles Handy has pointed out, the “paradox of success” occurs because we need to change before we have to change. However, “when things are going well we feel no reason to change.”

Survey Results: What Successful Transformations Share

When organizational transformations succeed, managers typically pay attention to “people issues,” especially fostering collaboration among leaders and employees and building capabilities.

Chip Heath

Many companies try to change themselves by benchmarking other organizations and borrowing their procedures or practices. The irony of benchmarking is that we’re essentially telling organizations to be more like GE or Apple or Nike. As Dev Patnaik, the author of Wired to Care, said to me one time, we know this doesn’t work on a personal level: we resist when members of our families … [ Read more ]

Jim March, Chip Heath

Jim March says there are two very different kinds of logic for making decisions. One is the logic of consequences. We’re great in business at changing behavior by changing consequences. If we want customers to buy more, we lower prices. If we want salespeople to sell more, we increase their bonuses. But the second kind of logic is the logic of identity. Many of the … [ Read more ]

Switch: Don’t Solve Problems—Copy Success

Find a bright spot and clone it.

That’s the first step to fixing everything from addiction to corporate malaise to malnutrition. A problem may look hopelessly complex. But there’s a game plan that can yield movement on even the toughest issues. And it starts with locating a bright spot — a ray of hope.

Thinking and Acting as a Great Programme Manager

Program management is now the preferred vehicle for bringing about major organizational and strategic change in many sectors. Unfortunately, former project managers entrusted with major programs are frequently not up to the task.

Cyril Connolly

Hate is the consequence of fear. We fear something before we hate it.

9 Questions to Ask When Leading Change to Get More Engagement

Here are nine questions you can ask to increase engagement when leading change.

Editor’s Note: read the comments for some additional useful questions.

Chaos, Complexity and Organisational Life

Can ‘Complexity Theory’ explain why strategies and change programs seldom deliver the results that were intended? Does it mean that we should leave everything to chance and abandon any attempts to shape our organizations for the future? In this article Dr Jean Boulton and Dr Peter Allen, from Cranfield’s Complex Systems Management Centre, explain how this ‘new science’ can be used by managers to rethink … [ Read more ]

The Irrational Side of Change Management

Most change programs fail, but the odds of success can be greatly improved by taking into account these counter-intuitive insights about how employees interpret their environment and choose to act.

John Wooden

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

Dan Heath, Chip Heath

Our rational brain has a problem focus when it needs a solution focus. If you are a manager, ask yourself, What is the ratio of the time you spend solving problems versus scaling successes? We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing.

Clayton Christensen

The capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.

John P. Kotter

Overcoming complacency is crucial at the start of any change process, and it often requires a little bit of surprise, something that grabs attention at more than an intellectual level. You need to surprise people with something that disturbs their view that everything is perfect.

Jim Murray

It is far more productive to study human behavior – why people do the things they do – and to seek benefit from the learning than it is to try to fight it.

The Trouble with Disruptive Change

New leaders want to put their stamp on an organization — but it’s often better for their egos than for their companies. Change for its own sake causes cynicism and resistance among the rank and file. And all too frequently, it’s harmful or worse for organizational performance.