In his new book Good Strategy / Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (July 2011), Richard Rumelt highlights the hallmarks of bad business strategy and recommends a framework for developing good strategy. We piggyback on his concepts to highlight the role that structured change plays in implementing good strategies. Bad Strategy According to […]
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 […]
Often the good intentions of leaders can morph into unintended consequences for employees when preparing to implement a large-scale business initiative (note: by large-scale we mean impacting many stakeholders). Why does this happen? In our experience, many well-intentioned leaders fail to fully appreciate the extent of the “downstream” impacts their strategic objectives will have on […]
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 […]
Our last article discussed how to conduct effective stakeholder interviews for the purpose of developing your organizational change strategy. This week we address a second important method of gathering qualitative data from stakeholders: focus groups. Focus groups are an interactive way to get cross-functional perspectives on a single issue and can prove very helpful during […]
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 […]
Jesse Jacoby
