Big and complicated problems often generate big, complex solutions. Ken Segall puts it very well in his book, Think Simple, when he writes, “It’s in our DNA to prefer simpler things, yet we so often open the door to complexity. That’s because being complicated is easy. Making things simpler is [...]
Many people think of a top-down communication cascade as their go-to method for communicating important changes. A communication cascade begins when executive leaders take a set of messages to their staff meetings. Attendees are supposed to carry the same messages to their staff meetings and so forth, until theoretically every [...]
If you are looking for a way to differentiate your company in a way that competitors will find it hard to emulate, look no further than the level of trust you have with your employees. Imagine two CEOs looking at efforts that will bring significant changes to their employees. [...]
Experts from the Harvard Business Review to IBM to Forbes/Towers Watson agree that change programs are successful about 25 percent of the time. It follows that if you are doing what everyone else is doing, you can expect to fail 75 percent of the time. So what are some of the [...]
For the past few years, a Microsoft Canada Consumer Insights Report has made the media rounds claiming that the average human attention span has declined from 12 seconds in 2000 to about 8 seconds in 2013, compared to 9 seconds for goldfish. There are many implications to this work [...]
We focus on finding solutions to our problems, but sometimes the bigger challenge is choosing the right problem to solve. Sports like basketball make it easy — score points and the team with the most wins. Business and life, on the other hand, are much harder. You can spend decades scoring [...]
You may at some point have seen a version of the Change Acceptance curve. People process change in very similar ways along a path that, when it works, takes them from status quo levels of satisfaction through denial, resistance, exploration, hope and commitment. Interestingly, this maps pretty neatly to the [...]
The burning platform has a storied place in the jargon of change management. The idea of creating urgency has been prominent in the literature, beginning with John Kotter’s seminal work, Leading Change. Some prefer to frame urgency up as “eliminating complacency” or “unwavering leadership commitment,” but the basic premise remains: [...]
There’s an old story about the building of a cathedral. The patron who has largely funded construction has asked for a tour of the building site, and the architect and foreman gladly oblige her. On the appointed day, she arrives to be greeted by the pair, who promptly take [...]