The McKinsey Quarterly published a case study titled Developing Better Change Leaders. Using the backdrop of a multi-national operations improvement initiative, it addresses leadership development and organizational change and underscores the factors that make it possible to drive and sustain profound transformation. The case study highlights a number of important change leadership practices. Below, we touch on […]
Leadership development initiatives are often dismissed as being too disruptive, too expensive, or too time consuming – simply not a priority. I’ll share a vignette and new research that may convince you otherwise. Recently, I was working with a multi-billion dollar manufacturing company. Our shared objective was to build internal change capability in response to […]
In our last article, we talked about the importance of the informal elements of the organization. Many valuable social networks exist within the informal part of the organization. Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a diagnostic methodology for uncovering and analyzing these networks and relationship patterns. When applied to business, SNA can be a powerful tool […]
“Can we make that information available on an iPad?” It is one of the most common requests we hear from executives in the systems transformation space – no doubt a confluence of technology and regulations. Call it the “cool factor” or simply a clever way for executives to avoid getting their fingers dirty in corporate […]
In their recent research report, 10 Best Practices in Organizational Change for Project Managers (August 29, 2011), Gartner focuses on the fact that project and program managers struggle with coordinating effective, organizational change practices. This struggle is compounded by an increasing rate of structural change from activities such as mergers and reorganizations, which is making change […]
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 […]
Just Because You’ve Communicated Doesn’t Mean They’ve Heard You It’s not uncommon for project teams and executive sponsors to suffer from what’s known as the “curse of knowledge,” a term coined in the book Made to Stick. In a nutshell, the curse of knowledge is the psychological phenomenon where once you know something well, it’s […]
I first published a version of this post back in 2010. The headline was the same. The argument was the same. The statistics, unfortunately, are not all that different. Fifteen years and several waves of transformation later, most organizations are still spending real money on change and still getting modest results for it. That should […]
Jesse Jacoby
