Structural failures leading to change failures In the previous blog I described the book, The Blunders of our Governments by Prof. Anthony King and Sir Ivor Crewe which describes a series of major blunders by our governments. The third part of their book covers the systemic failures (as opposed to the human failures) which have …
Category archives: Strategy
Avoiding Blunders
Blunder: a spectacular change failure A book I have just finished reading contains some excellent ideas for avoiding a complete failure in a change. The book, The Blunders of our Governments by Prof. Anthony King and Sir Ivor Crewe describes a series of major blunders by our governments. In each case a government minister set …
Three supports to successful change
Is Managing Change the same as Project Management? A recent tutorial from Prosci identifies three critical areas of activity needed for change success. The model is both simple and elegant. However, it opens the question about where should change management professionals go for their support. The three areas are: project management; sponsorship; and change management. …
Falling trees – missing benefits
Did you hear that? I am sure you are aware of the philosophical problem about a tree falling in a forest; if there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Which amounts to the issue of if we don’t experience something then how do we know if it has happened. …
Strategic change journey
Internal strategic change for fast growth I have written in the past about the need for change in an organisation being driven by strategic change outside. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review on Transient Advantage by Rita Gunther McGrath (one of my favourite management authors) shows that there are internal drivers for change …
Lessons from Big Science
A comment piece in a recent edition of the economist looked at lessons that the rest of the world can take from the collaborative projects in Big Science. Big Science is things like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN at which the existence of the famous Higgs Particle was demonstrated to world wide interest. The …
Rate of Change and Change Saturation increase
Depressing News: change saturation increases Recent data reported by Prosci show that both the amount of change expected by organisations and the number of organisations saturated by change have increased. This is a gloomy outlook given the problems most organisations have in doing change. Lets put these three ideas together and see what can be …
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Mid-Level Managers: the new superhero
Mid Level Managers as Superhero In a recent blog post on the Harvard Business Review web site Behnam Tabrizi reported on some research he had undertaken on why change and innovation (a pre-curser to change) didn’t work. The article is focused on Leadership but I found some powerful snippets about doing change.
Change is THE strategic capability
Making change a strategic capability I have been working on a capability model for change recently and then preparing to teach a course on strategy as part of a management qualification. Putting the two together brings me to a conclusion that the one thing an organisation has to be able to do to survive is …
Using a capability model for organisation change
Change Capability Model We have developed a simple capability model for organisation change. The purpose is to better understand the nature of organisation change and how people go about it. The model allows us to explain what sort of training is useful given the organisation’s capability maturity (i.e. the level they are at). It also …
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