Never underestimate the importance of buy-in to the success of your strategic initiative or business transformation. Buy-in is so critical for creating a sense of urgency and gaining stakeholder alignment that John Kotter wrote a book about it: Buy-In: Saving Your Good Ideas From Getting Shot Down(2010, Harvard Business Press). All business initiatives begin as […]
Merging two established organizations is not merely the combination of two operations under one management authority. Successful integration combines, replaces, and transforms diverse processes, systems and organizational structures. Done well, the resulting entity will be distinctly different and ideally much better than the original operations – this is the “synergy” that is goal of most […]
Any business transformation is destined to fail without a powerful vision of the future. A well-crafted vision is central to aligning the workforce to a company’s strategic program and motivating people to make change happen. To be effective, the future vision must take into account the current realities of the enterprise, but also set forth goals […]
Marketing guru and best-selling author Seth Godin recently published a blog post about the warning signs of defending the status quo. When confronted with new ideas, these “defenders” are adept at emphasizing the negative aspects of change and highlighting the positive aspects of the current state. For example they: Highlight the pain to a few […]
Company leaders often ask us about common pitfalls associated with organizational change initiatives and how they can avoid them. The term “pitfall,” defined as a hidden danger in the form of a covered pit used as a trap, implies a sudden occurrence. We prefer the term quagmire which more accurately describes what actually occurs in […]
Establishing a sense of urgency at all levels of the organization is a necessary first step in gaining the cooperation required to drive a significant change effort. Half of the companies that fail to affect needed change make their mistakes at the very beginning by not creating an appropriate sense of urgency. The approach most […]
Interviewing stakeholders, along with focus groups and surveys, is one of the primary methods of gathering qualitative data. Insights gleaned from stakeholder interviews provide the basis for stakeholder analysis and prioritization and serve as a critical step in formulating an effective organizational change strategy. Stakeholder interviews done well yield many benefits: Correct structures, processes, and […]
When companies choose to deploy new software to end-users across the enterprise, they are looking to either enhance business performance or minimize IT costs. These goals are often broken down into more discrete objectives such as increasing employee productivity, providing new capabilities, streamlining processes, reducing service desk calls, and so forth. Regardless of whether the […]
Jesse Jacoby
