You can't use a hammer when a screwdriver is needed
In the world of organisational change management, practitioners have a ream of tools at their disposal.
They have served us well. They were hammers for nails.
Today, however, is a different story.
I am observing, across many organisations, practitioners struggling to use those tools in a landscape that is fundamentally changing.
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Kill the Hierarchy! - Increased Innovation
Never has the need for innovation been more important than it is today.
Organisations with a flatter structure tend to be much more innovative. If innovation is strategically important to you, you need to be flat(ter).
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Karen's Conversations #32
Talking with Dr. Jen Frahm about whether organisational change management is broken, how we need to adapt OCM to be more agile, how do we 'agile-ise' our practices, the Agile Leadership Program, and Jen's book 'Conversations of Change.
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Karen's Conversations #31
Talking with Lena Ross from #changehacks about 'Language and Learning for Agile Change'
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Kill the Hierarchy! - Decentralised Decision-Making
The flat organisational model promotes employee involvement through decentralised decision-making. It elevates the level of responsibility of front-line employees and eliminates unnecessary layers of management, resulting in comments and feedback reaching all of the personnel involved in decision-making more quickly.
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Book Review - Hacking for Agile Change
Albeit the title could infer that this is for people working on 'agile' projects, it is far from that. This book is for anyone that recognises that change is now constant and in everything that we do we must do with increased agility.
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Change is Broken - Breakfast Seminar Video
In February 21018, I hosted a breakfast seminar called 'Change is Broken'.
atch the 40 minute video of the breakfast seminar.
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And In Last Place.....People
At the start of 2018, ITSM.tools asked its readers to vote for the IT service management (ITSM) topics that they felt would be the most important for the website to cover in 2018.
I didn’t see any major surprises in the results but was disappointed that there was no mention about increasing our understanding of how we are going to support our people in a world in which change is constant. With “people” topics taking a backseat to the process and technology.
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Kill the Hierarchy! - Rapid Decision-Making
In a hierarchy decisions can take a long time due to the layers through which information has to flow before a decision is made. When organisations need to respond quickly to changing priorities, opportunities, competition, threats etc. the ability to make decisions quickly will be essential for success. Therefore the hierarchy has to be flattened so that there are less decision-making hoops through which to jump.
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Change is Broken! White Paper
Download my latest white paper - Change Management is Broken!
I will ask you to subscribe to my posts, but then it is yours to keep.
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Kill The Hierarchy!
In this post I discuss the need to kill the hierarchy.
The only way to enable a ‘faster’ organisation that can respond to constant change is to flatten the structure. It needs to move away from a structure of hierarchical control to a flatter structure that removes the bureaucracy that slows organisations down.
It not about having no structure at all and having no hierarchy – I think there will always be an element of hierarchy.
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Change Management is Broken Seminar Review and Workshop Announcement
At my recent breakfast seminar, I was pleased to welcome an eclectic mix of interesting people including Change Leaders, Practitioners and Consultants, Human Resources professionals and Program Managers from many different types of industry backgrounds.
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Game On! - Support - Coaches and Players
In this post I explore support – the relationship between the Coaches and the Players.
Coaches need to provide unrelenting support for the Players.
Players are operating in times of instability and uncertainty, which is not going to change anytime soon. They need the ability to remain highly effective under intense pressure.
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Game On! - Sustainment - Managers and Coaches
In this post I explore sustainment – the relationship between the Managers and the Coaches.
ustainment consists of three key activities - educate, support, and coach and mentor.
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Top 25 Thought Leaders 2017
Proud and in great company!
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It's All About the People
I recently wrote an article for ITSM.tools about why organisational change management is so important but also why it needs to change itself.
It’s not about the technology, it’s not about the processes, it’s all about the people.
Without a focus on the latter, the former have no worth.
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Game On! - Engagement - Players and Managers
Engagement consists of four activities – educate, communicate, facilitate and alleviate. Change resilience can be achieved through engagement. When excessive amounts of change are taking place, employees can become disengaged.
A HBR article (2010) summed up constant change. It said
“The companies most likely to be successful in making change work to their advantage are the ones that no longer view change as a discrete event to be managed, but as a constant opportunity to evolve the business."
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Why Change Management Efforts 'Really' Fail!
Bruce Harpham recently wrote an article published in CIO called “8 ways you’re failing at change management “ (Jan 3, 2018).
The article explores the 8 most common ways that change management efforts fail.
Whilst I agree with some of what Harpham has written, I think some of his observations fail to reflect the world in which are currently living.
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Book Review - Lean Change Management
Are you passionate about bringing meaningful change into your organization? If the answer is yes, then this book is for you.
If you want to add to your change management toolkit with ideas from Agile, Lean Startup, neuroscience, psychology, and organizational development, then this is a must read.
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Game On! A New Change Management Strategy
Change is now constant and complex. There is no time to take breath and wait for one change to be embedded before moving on to the next. Changes are hitting us like an automatic rifle. The old scattergun effect of dealing with change is dead.
In this post, I would like to explore the roles we need in the organisation to manage in a VUCA world.
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