As the country continues to wait for the results of the election – one thing is very clear. We all need a reset. This election and much of the last 4 years have been stressful. Regardless of which candidate you supported on November 3rd, we’ve all been wound up pretty tight. Whether you call it gas-lighting or not – we’ve never experienced 4 years like the last. Four years where there was a clear good team and a clear bad…
No one marches into an implementation and aims to deliver only the absolute bare minimum. Well, maybe Larry does. Screw Larry – he’s an idiot. Well, no one except Larry aims for the lowest common denominator. Even so, it’s deceptively easy to slip from aspirational change into ‘good-enough’ type implementations. Sometimes we even justify the slippage by calling our new target, MVP, Minimum Viable Product. However, the difference is that MVP is a target along a journey, not a watered-down,…
Software Implementations are becoming the norm. We implement slack because Water Coolers conversations no longer exist. We try a new Work Management solution because Emails and Microsoft Project can’t keep up. IT requires Single Sign-On because, well, everything needs to be secure. It’s just everything. And once one new software is in, you need to get another one. And another and another. It’s the world we live in now – it’s what people have been calling ‘Digital Transformation’ for a…
Change Fatigue is very real. As organizations push forward efforts to Digital Transform their work – countless applications, processes, and reorgs are being tossed at employees. In fact, the change doesn’t stop – there is no ‘done’ for Digital Transformation. The future of work, as it were, has got to be better than this. In the interim, along with all of this change comes Change Fatigue. The idea that at some point, employees have had enough. The reaction to any…
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin When we had a reduction in force at Charles Schwab, we all knew why. We all knew why because the leaders opened a dialog about the needed change. The talked to all of us, they listened to all of us, and they helped us all face the inevitable. Well, not everyone was able to face the change – Larry struggled….
NPR recently published a story about Hotel Corona. Hotel Corona, previously known as the Dan Hotel, in Jerusalem, became a hotel for people recovering from the Coronavirus. Over 200 people from all walks of life, ages, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds were forced to live together during their recoveries. Two negative tests for COVID-19 was the only way out. If you have 35 minutes, it’s well worth your time to listen. But, to summarize, these individuals started as you would have…
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. – Peter Drucker If this is the case, why is Change Management, an effort to address the Cultural underpinnings of Change Initiatives, often seen as wasteful? We think about the technology, battle over price and then completely ignore that the technology being introduced is the “strategy” part of Drucker’s statement. What about the culture? Perhaps one of the reasons we have to re-learn this lesson is because we constantly forget. Remembering the last implementation that…
Whether you are a change leader, accidental or other, you’ll want some help to understand and explain the challenge that lay before you. If you are an intentional change leader, you are likely in possession of some of these data points. If you are an accidental change leader, either you volunteered or was volunteered, this will hopefully help calibrate with your Executives. The Law of Diffusion Simon Sinek often references The law of diffusion in his “Start with Why” talks….
In the book, Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, et al, there is a lot that can be learned about the Organizational risks and benefits to creating a new category. A new category is a new market space like Amazon with online shopping, Salesforce with CRM cloud software, and IKEA with furniture. I maintain that many of the risks identified don’t just apply to Category Creation but also to Digital Transformation. Both require a massive leap of faith. Category Creation is…
Before you take on a Digital Transformation project, there are a few things I’d recommend that you consider before undergoing such a significant shift. Based on my previous experience too few companies slow down long enough to do this, but it will save you time and money in the long-run. What I’m talking about is performing a self-assessment of your organization’s capabilities and readiness for change by completing a Digital Transformation Readiness assessment. This will help you understand just how…