business change

Over the past 6 months I have seen many instances where organizations have failed to take advantage of opportunities; lost market-share; put their brand at risk; or wasted resources; resulting in loss of revenue and/or additional costs.
Given that August is a quiet month, it has provided me with time to reflect on some of the problems that I have experienced and them with you so that you might learn from some of these outcomes.
So here goes:

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to work at a summer camp you’ll know it’s one of the best “jobs” you’ll ever have. I use the word job in inverted commas intentionally because more often than not it doesn’t feel like work at all. There are deep and meaningful conversations with people who start to feel more like your family than your colleagues. There is the cold embrace of a dip in the lake after a late afternoon game of capture the flag that always gets a little too intense. There’s the jaw-ache you get after laughing too hard for too long at some silly in-joke.

The two biggest issues faced by organisations today are the changing business context and the changing people context.

The changing business context 

How is Brexit currently mirroring most corporate change?

Theresa May and her trusted team (the Board) are currently spending a lot of time behind closed doors, with little outcome.  The people (your people), know that change is on the horizon, they know it needs to happen by a certain date, but nothing is happening.  People want to know how it might impact them, their work and their families, but nothing.

Nowadays the term Lean Management (LM) is widely used and mostly understood. However, implementing a proper LM program requires some expertise to guide you through the different stages and fully achieve the desired results. Here's a quick guide of what you need to consider in order to successfully implement such a program.

Change has fast become the one constant in businesses today, but can there be a point when too much change is no longer good for business?

If the changes aren’t fully considered, fully implemented and the people are not engaged with the process, then yes.

In 2013 a large London based organisation commenced a two-year transformation programme looking to change everything from their systems, processes, policies, procedures, structures, IT infrastructure and nationwide office locations.

You’re about to embark on a change programme, you’ve spent weeks or months planning the changes behind the scenes and you’ve announced the changes to your people. You’ve got a communication plan with all of the announcements, the meetings and the emails scheduled and still your people don’t seem engaged with the changes or understand the reasons for them – what’s next?

Much has been written about current middle management roles becoming increasingly irrelevant,ANZ's Digital Chief Maile Carnegie a few months ago famously referring to the 'frozen middle' who "have graduated from doing to managing and basically bossing other people around and shuffling Powerpoints", who also "resist change like death." Carnegie highlighting the importance of distributed leadership and del

We are far better at planning for the short-term than we are for the long-term.

Think about when you get in the car. If you don’t know where you are going, you tap in the details to a sat-nav system to tell you the route. You might have an advanced system that updates itself to find quicker routes if there is traffic.

You probably know what you’re doing this weekend and maybe even the weekend after. You might even have planned your summer holiday.