The Change Management...

The Change Management Specialist plays a key role in helping projects (change initiatives) meet business, schedule and budget objectives. They focus on the people side of change – that includes the impact of changes to business processes, systems and technology, job roles and organisation structures. The primary focus is in creating and implementing change management plans that minimise employee resistance and maximise employee engagement. The Change Management Specialist works to drive faster adoption, greater ultimate utilisation and higher proficiency on the changes impacting employees in the organisation such that business results are achieved.

Greatest change management...

Greatest change management obstacles

For the second study in a row, ineffective sponsorship was cited as the greatest obstacle. The most commonly encountered obstacles to change management success included:

1. Ineffective change sponsorship from senior leaders
2. Resistance to change from employees
3. Insufficient change management resources and funding
4. Middle management resistance

2009 edition of Prosci's Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking report

For the sixth...

For the sixth straight study, the top contributor to success identified by participants was active and visible executive sponsorship.
2009 edition of Prosci's Best Practices in Change Management benchmarking report

Promote or be Remote!

Negativity is an interesting instrument in the outpouring of the poor souls that feel they can only survive the corporate World through talking someone or group down. I'm not referring to the people who challenge new idea's or who seem to irritate with their constant infusion of cryptic comments. No, I'm thinking of those people who seem to have a need to conduct an undercover attack and thus begin a process of trying to destruct other people bit by bit over time through their caustic observations and their own lack of self esteem.

Bitterly...these conversations about other people are usually...mostly...okay, always, take place when the other person is not present to defend the negative comments about them. Don't you find it annoying when people make judgments on you based on what some other less credible person has deemed to be the truth. And the person who plucks up the courage, or should I say 'lets slip' what is being said, doesn't have the courage to tell you  the source.

This is exactly how a good person can be perceived as incompetent, lazy, not focused, not applying themselves and so on and so forth...not because it is fact, but because less professional people make poor judgments without putting the situation in perspective and like a virus become the source of negative viral networking. I wrote yesterday about Memetic Change and how we influence our colleagues. What I talk about today is Memetic Change in its most disruptive form.

If you only have something negative to say about someone else..then don't. Oh..and don't use that I was asked to comment rubbish. Lets face it, we do have to observe behaviours so that we can improve performance, but don't use that as an excuse to jump in and savage a good person...and we are all good.

The point of this commentary is that it is about CHANGE...personal change. It is a reminder to us all that we cannot create a team ethic if we promote a dysfunctional environment. The best teams are built on a pillar of trust. If I can't trust you to look for the positive in me, talk positive about me and embrace my faults professionally then it is unlikely that you will earn the trust of the people that you work with.  Why? Because they will soon realise that at some point they will be the subject of your negative attention and who knows what you will be saying about them. The trust has evaporated and so too with it a true and lasting relationship.

Change it now because it is a caustic habit that is filtering into those spaces in your life that eventually make their way to your heart and mind. Before you know it your life has become a spontaneous series of people bashing to defend your unstable existence. 


So 'Promote' people or expect to be 'Remote' from people. CHANGE!

Memetic Change...spread it!

You know what genes are...they are replicators that pass faithfully from parent to child and influence the mechanics of life. 

Memes are the beliefs and ideas that can also replicate from one person to another. One mind to another. What we say, how we say it and with what level of passion has an influence that should not be underestimated. Memes do mutate as they pass to other people. We learn and interpret...we interpret and improve. This is a process that has negative and positive impacts which highlights the need to take care with how we express ourselves and outwardly face the World.

Viral change and memetic change are linked. It is a scientific subject that could take up pages of intellectual argument. But lets strip all that away and make it easy. You have the power to influence in every choice that you make. You see it every day with children, partners, colleagues and even strangers. 

Make the choice to make a difference. Change the World by changing yourself first and be positive...it can spread very quickly!

The challenges of...

The challenges of change are always hard. It is important that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this nation and realize that we each have a role that requires us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future.
Hillary Rodham Clinton 

Consider resistance to...

Consider resistance to change as a positive. When you engage with resistance to change, you receive valuable feedback that triggers a personal review process. Respect the feedback - it's the silence that kills progress!

Don't Just Stand There...

I wrote the other day about head nodding at Lehman Brothers and even mentioned it in a change presentation earlier today. I open up my emails and 'The Courage Institute' are quoting Gerstein and Shaw in an article who analyze the demise of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which took the lives of all 7 crew members (including Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, z"l). Their analysis? It takes courage to push back against organizational inertia, or to challenge higher-ups who say, "Damn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead!"

Risk assessment and risk mitigation is not the only area where Gerstein and Shaw see a need for courage to assert thought-leadership rather than keeping your head below the parapets and "just following orders." They also describe the ways that bystander rationalizations and bystander behaviour keeps organizations from seizing opportunities -- or making the most of promising innovations.

Their recipe to counter bystander behaviour? They offer 7 prescriptions which call for:

1) More courage. To step up. Champion ideas. And, in our words, uplift, mobilize, ennoble.

2) Less need for courage. So that innovative thinking -- whether it is about serious risks or promising opportunities -- face a lower activation barrier.

http://www.courageinstitute.org/rokdownloads/Articles&whitepapers/bystanders-gerstein+shaw.pdf

The World is Changing...

According to Anders Sorman-Nilsson the World has changed and so our thinking needs to change with it! In his new "manifesto" Thinque Funky: Upgrade your Thinking, Anders provides a three step phase that aligns with the development of the Internet: 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. It is a workbook for coming to grips with the new age of iPhone, Globalisation, Social Networking and the future paradigm shifts that we will all embrace.

It doesn't seem that long ago that my company only had one corporate mobile phone that we had to book out. It was the size of a shoebox with zero performance! Now the whole World is in my palm and botox treatments may soon come with optional "icomms" implants!

Mike Hanley from Boss Magazine has reviewed the book and rates it average for readability and usefulness. I guess these type of books can be quite frustrating. A futurist book that takes up two thirds analysing the past. Why didn't he start with Web 3.0 then 4.0 and be done with it?

Thinque Funky: Upgrade Your Thinking by Anders Sorman-Nilsson, Thinque Publishing.

Practitioners' Masterclass

Stephen Warrilow's new book 'Practitioners Masterclass' – Leading your people though change, putting it all together and managing the whole messy business" is now available.

http://www.strategies-for-managing-change.com/practitioners-masterclass.html

It includes and reviews established material, pulls it all together with original material that "plug the gaps" in existing models and approaches.

"Success is not determined by knowing all the answers, but from knowing the right questions to ask"

It has been created to:

• Educate you and challenge you to ask the right questions
  
• Stimulate you and provoke your thought processes
  
• Facilitate discussions with colleagues [up + down the line]
  
• Challenge prevailing assumptions
  
• Show strengths and weaknesses of popular change models
  
• Help you articulate sensitive issues
  
• Health check your own plans for a change initiative
  
• Provide tools and processes to deal with all the messy stuff

Practitioners Masterclass takes a much wider view and directly addresses the root causes of change failure - the people related issues.

Most leadership experts...

Most leadership experts argue that the best way to to manage change is to create harmony among the key stakeholders. Sounds okay, but hey...Saj-Nicole A. Joni, CEO of the Cambridge International Group thinks differently and he may have a point!

Research indicates that for large-scale change or innovation initiatives, a healthy dose of dissent is usually just as important. Within an acceptable range of competition and tension, dissent will fire up more of an individuals brain, stimulating more pathways and engaging more creative centres. The point is that too many people often agree, creating an environment of head-nodders. When something clearly is not right the head-nodding continues and the company falls over. Take a look at Lehman Brothers. At the time of its collapse in 2008 they reportedly had one of the strongest cultures of teamwork and loyalty on Wall Street!

Something to think about!

Practitioners' Masterclass

Watch this space! It's not published yet, but I'm reliably informed by the author that the final version is almost complete. I was privileged to have an advance copy of Stephen Warrilow's new ebook to review... 'Practitioners' Masterclass', subtitled 'Leading your people through change, putting it all together and managing the whole messy business'.

In the book Stephen introduces his EEMAP processã that combines Kotter, MSP and ADKAR. More later...!

Come to the edge

Come to the edge.
“It’s too high.”
Come to the edge.
“We might fall.”
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came.
And he pushed.
And they flew.
French poet Guillaume Appollinaire

Courage isn’t a solo act. As thought-leaders, it isn’t enough to be technically correct. As an executive, it isn’t enough to be a brilliant business strategist. Execution is about ennobling people to come to the edge and get under their wings so they have the lift to fly.

Strategic Management Sciences (SMS)

SMS was founded in 1986 on the basis of three core rules: add value, maintain unity and enhance reputation. More than 20 years on, these values remain central to our business, allowing us to continue delivering excellence in everything we do.

At SMS, we specialise in improving operational performance and IT delivery. We do this by improving the way our clients use people, processes and technologies. This means we address everything from business integration to compliance, process improvement to change management and technology strategy to systems integration and application development.

In short, we make things happen.

We have the experience and the industry expertise to ensure real, measurable and profitable outcomes for your business. SMS... ‘Your Vision. Delivered.’

Acts of kindness create change

"Our work over the past few years, examining the function of human social networks and their genetic origins, has led us to conclude that there is a deep and fundamental connection between social networks and goodness," says Nicholas Christakis, professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. Christakis recently teamed up with James Fowler, an associate professor at UC San Diego in the Department of Political Science, to produce some of the world's first lab-based evidence that cooperative behavoir is contagious!

Read More.......

Acts of kindness spread surprisingly easily: just a few people can make a difference

Don't Feed the FEAR!

The language that we use is important...very important. It is not just the self talk that psychologists advise we adopt that is important, but also our communication with other people.

And when I say communication I mean the whole portfolio of interactions from body language to tone of voice.

Colleagues and clients will pick up on any negativity and it will spread. Our negativity and poor use of language becomes a plague that can sweep through a team and organisation destroying any hope of a positive outlook.

Most success is founded on the basic principles of positive thinking. It's easy...you just choose to think, act and speak with a positive language. The impact will be amazing as we change our language from "it may work" to "It will work".

Never underestimate the power of influence that you have on clients. Don't feed their fear...feed their confidence instead!

Break down the defense mechanism and move forward!

This vignette links closely to my previous blog on peer reviews of our written submissions. I'm a little conscious that there is a tendency to put up a wall of defense around ourselves for a variety of reasons. What I mean is that when we are approached to discuss our work, not only what we produce, but how we have produced it, we can often be very defensive about what we do and how we do it.

Unfortunately, this defensiveness manifests in a lack of enthusiasm to talk about our work and avoid meeting colleagues or managers, sometimes being borderline rude. This does not do us any good at all because we then lack the opportunity to improve our work and learn from the experience.

The question I ask is why do we respond in this way?

On reflection I believe it stems from a lack of trust. So often our work and /or performance is critiqued by people who do not have the appropriate skills to do so, but who believe they have the right. The lack of trust comes from the follow on actions and the poorly managed processes for reviewing what we do and what we produce.

Often our work is reviewed out of context. People will make comments on our performance without fully understanding the environmental issues and will make poor decisions based on perspective rather than reality.

To avoid any negative response to a review I recommend the following.

First of all don't second guess or assume the worst when your work is to be reviewed. Don't begin those negative monkey thoughts of all the bad things that can be said. Look at the situation from fact...not the ongoing fiction in your mind.

Be proud of your work and willingly open yourself up to discuss what you have done. Promote the opportunity and welcome the chance to learn so that next time the delivery will be even better.

More important, see this as a great opportunity to provide learning to clients and colleagues. Most sales people will tell you that every rejection brings them closer to a sale. It follows that every question brings you closer to a magnificent performance.

So rather than prepare yourself to attack or defend your corner, I suggest you take a deep breathe and take a step back. Then another and then another yet again. Withdraw from the need to defend and just Be. Create a positive mindset and embrace the opportunity to learn or teach...most value will come from both experiences.

Break down the barriers of negativity and willingly discuss your work and your performance and in this way you will move forward and you will be more successful as colleagues identify you as a key team player!