Well, technically, they are already here. According to the Pew Research Center, more than a third of the workforce is already made up of millennials. And by 2025, Millennials will make up 40% of the workforce. Aren’t you glad you were sitting for that? Going further, according to the Digital Marketing Resource Center –…
There are a million ways to stop change from happening. But one surefire way to do it is to say, “I can’t do it until I have it all figured out.” That way, because no one has figured it all out – you don’t have to do a single thing. Well, maybe Ryan Reynolds…
My first large-scale change initiative involved moving Charles Schwab’s Creative Services department from a paper-based workflow to a completely online workflow while also integrating multiple Creative groups (added through acquisition) into a standard process. It was a 2-year project that was chock-full of learnings. One of the most dramatic learnings was that of the…
In the book, Play Bigger by Al Ramadan et al., a lot can be learned about the Organizational risks and benefits of 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…
When you implement software, you can face any number of “change personas” from the over-zealous go-getter to the Luddite who is still learning e-mail (yet, was somehow hired as the Social Media expert). One other type you’ll run into is someone who wants to know the absolute minimum. They’ll stop you when you talk through…
Paper over Something (verb) to hide an unpleasant situation, especially a problem or disagreement, in order to make people believe it does not exist or is not serious. Whenever I enter an implementation, and I have the time and space, I love to do the “How’s this going to fail?” exercise. In short, I ask the core team to explain how what I’m about to do will fail. I remember…
We all know Corporate Climbers. People that seek promotion at any cost. Ambition is good, but there is such a thing as too much ambition – see this video for more information on the dangers of ambition. Climbers typically have too much ambition. But, to be clear, you can be ambitious and not be…
Satisficing – (verb) Pursuing the minimum acceptable results or outcome because that decision is familiar, hassle-free, and requires the least investigation. Herbert Simon first coined the term in 1956. The difference between satisficing and iterating is the idea of permanence. When you satisfice, you’ve accepted an end-state far less than ideal. In other words,…