Good change is good for business I think the heading answers the question! A recent survey reported by McKinsey entitled ‘Why Implementation Matters‘ reports on the effect that strategy implementation has on a company. Strategy implementation is quite clearly stated as the ability to implement major change programmes. As you would expect with McKinsey they …
Category archives: Change Management
Middle managers to drive change
What does it take to succeed in change? Middle managers in most organisations have a huge influence over the success of organisational change. Most middle managers are passive about change; a few step up to delivering change; all of them need to be behind the change. Some recent blogs point to how to get middle …
Change Advocates — a good idea?
The idea of advocating change Change advocates both promote change in a business and help protect staff from poor change implementation. They do this by advocating the change on behalf of the business and being a channel between affected staff and senior managers. The role demands trust and respect from both staff and managers; here …
The strategy dilemma for change
Translating a guess into a plan The dilemma for change managers leading a strategic organisation change is translating the uncertainty of the strategic analysis and decisions into actionable plans to deliver benefits. The problem is that there is no right answer to the question “what should our strategy be?” The strategists have looked into the …
Design your change around decisions
Decisions first, organisation later Which do you think should come first: the definition of the task to be carried out or the team to do the task? So what happens when an organisation needs to change: the top manager re-organises his senior team to prepare for the change. This seems to be putting the cart …
Making change personal
Using change to grow yourself In the April 2014 Harvard Business Review I found a paper about creating a very open culture to encourage personal learning by Robert Kegan, Lisa Lahey, Andy Fleming, and Matthew Miller called “Making Business Personal“. The starting premise of the paper is that ’employees do a second job that no …
Three Myths for Change
Applying strategic thinking to change In a recent blog posting on HBR Nick Tassler wrote about three myths he has found in strategic thinking. I thought these ideas have just as much relevance for Managing Change. These three myths help to focus on doing the right things to make a difference with the resources available …
Watch a blunder in action?
Universal Credit blunders on A number of recent news items and blog posts in the technical sphere are signposting the UK Government’s Universal Credit programme as the next Government blunder. See our recent blog posts on human bias and systemic problems lessons learned based on a recently published book by Prof. Anthony King and Sir …
Reporting bias and failure: lessons for sponsors
How do you know what’s going on? Some recent research into bias in reporting about project status has implications for change governance. Two recent examples of poor reporting have surfaced recently: the fiasco on the launch of the IT to support the US Government Health Care programme (Obamacare) and the under-performance of the Universal Credit …
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It's still the Senior Manager wot did it
Contributors to Change Success A recent email from Prosci about their 2013 survey (results published this year) lists the top seven contributors to change success. This is probably the most important result from the survey and the most widely reported. Top of the list, again, and by a large margin is ‘active and visible executive …