Posts Tagged with "change"

#5: At scale, your systems will break.

Systems will break past a certain scale; this is inevitable. In the case of software, systems generally survive one order of magnitude of the growth — for example, in network traffic.Read more →

#5a: Organisations and their capacity for change.

Since systems are designed for certain scales, and most companies pursue continued growth, most systems within successful organisations will inevitably break. This failure can be mitigated through deliberate change management — but some caution is needed.Read more →

#11a: Dissent isn't all bad.

Dissent can be a positive force for change. You should prefer to hear people speak openly on what they feel needs to change — or to voice their opposition to change — than to hear false assent. As least you know where these people stand.Read more →

#11b: Why are some people unwilling to express a dissenting opinion?

Those who blindly follow any change — or do not express their opinions on a matter relevant to them — are not allies to change. As they hold no attachment to a particular change, they are unlikely to put themselves on the line to protect it.Read more →

#14a1: Repeated actions change organisational beliefs.

The connection between repeated action and belief change is not only true for an individual but also for an organisation. New ways of thinking and acting brought from the outside, or internal mobilisation to respond to a changing world, drive organisational change.Read more →

#16: Incremental change is the predominant form of change.

Success and failure are not absolutes. Goodness — in art, in expertise — is a spectrum. The world changes in increments. There are few major leaps in any endeavour; most progress comes incrementally.Read more →

Reference #31: An Elegant Puzzle

There are at least three classes of solutions within an organisation: process design, culture change, and organisational design.Read more →

Reference #50: An Elegant Puzzle

One approach to leading without authority is "Model, Document, Share". This can lead to more adoption than a top-down mandate.Read more →

Reference #178: Peopleware

"Blindly loyal followers" are not allies to change. They are likely to hop onto the next bandwagon as quickly as they joined your cause.Read more →

Reference #179: Peopleware

Chaos is an inevitable step in the process of organisational change. Virginia Satir provides the following model of change:Read more →

Reference #180: Peopleware

Change can only succeed if we allow for some failure.Read more →

Reference #189: The First 90 Days

Leadership transitions provide opportunity for change both for the leader and their organisation. But for the leader, they are also periods of vulnerability.Read more →

Reference #227: The First 90 Days

Underpromise and overdeliver early in your role to build credibility.Read more →

Reference #234: The First 90 Days

A large amount of the change instituted by a new leader comes within their first nine months.Read more →

Reference #241: The First 90 Days

The best way to lead change depends on the situation. After identifying the most important problem, you need to assess whether the organisation is ready to change — in which case a plan-then-implement approach will work well — or whether you need to engage in collective learning.Read more →

Reference #242: The First 90 Days

People and organisations can only absorb so much change at once.Read more →

Reference #243: The First 90 Days

Changing your organisation likely means changing its culture.Read more →

Reference #245: The First 90 Days

Leaders must be organisational architects.Read more →

Reference #249: The First 90 Days

Your organisation has limited capacity to absorb change.Read more →

Reference #275: The First 90 Days

People may resist your proposed change agenda for the following reasons:Read more →

Reference #292: The First 90 Days

A quarter of all leaders in a typical Fortune 500 companies change jobs each year. This is even higher for executives, with one study finding a 35% rate of transition annually in the top three tiers of leadership.Read more →

Reference #465: Organizational Culture and Leadership

A role of leadership is to make changes. If those changes produce success for a group, its culture evolves and survives. But if the changes aren't adopted, or they are but don't lead to success, the result is "failed leadership". We only call this behaviour leadership when it succeeds.Read more →

Reference #468: Organizational Culture and Leadership

Assumptions that work well under one set of circumstances may become dysfunctional in other circumstances.Read more →

Reference #481: Organizational Culture and Leadership

That certain groups are slow to adopt new technology may be due to strong cultural forces. For example, a doctor may refuse to use a keyboard and computer as their use reduces her eye-to-eye contact with patients.Read more →

Reference #484: Organizational Culture and Leadership

In an organisation's early stage, the emphasis of culture is on differentiating that organisation from its environment. It is the psychosocial "glue" that holds the organisation together and gives its members identity.Read more →

Reference #485: Organizational Culture and Leadership

Absent major external stressors, and if the founder remains for a long time, early stage company culture evolves in small increments by assimilating what works well. This occurs through two basic processes: general evolution and specific evolution.Read more →

Reference #486: Organizational Culture and Leadership

Leaders in early-stage organisations can affect culture change by systematically promoting insiders whose core assumptions align better with the culture the leadership is trying to move towards than the status quo.Read more →

Reference #487: Organizational Culture and Leadership

When a mid-stage company whose founder has moved on is faced with a crisis (as slipping performance or an acquisition), a new executive leader is often brought in. This leader can fail in three ways:Read more →

Reference #488: Organizational Culture and Leadership

Culture serves different functions over an organisation's lifecycle. Leader therefore must consider different issues of culture change at each stage.Read more →

Reference #495: Organizational Culture and Leadership

For any non-trivial change or learning in an organisation, there are three stages in the change process:Read more →

Reference #496: Organizational Culture and Leadership

When faced with the need to change, you will often feel "learning anxiety" that produces resistance to change. This may result from a number of fears:Read more →

Reference #497: Organizational Culture and Leadership

To create the conditions for change and for individual learning to occur, keep in mind two principles.Read more →

Reference #498: Organizational Culture and Leadership

When you create psychological safety for people undergoing change, you enable them to feel that learning is possible and beneficial. In the context of an organisation, you can create this safety by implementing the following activities:Read more →

Reference #499: Organizational Culture and Leadership

When leading a change process, don't define the goals in terms of changes to values or beliefs, or a vague "culture change". Instead define it concretely in terms of desired behaviours.Read more →

Seeing your organisation as a system

Have you had all the right elements for your team to perform, but didn’t get the results you wanted? Have you tried changing one thing, only for something else to break? I have. I know why. The secret comes from seeing your organisation as a system.Read more →

Knowledge: the hidden cost of layoffs

It is a truth universally acknowledged that layoffs suck. They suck for the people laid off. They suck for the people left behind. Layoffs incur huge emotional and monetary costs. And there’s another, more hidden cost to layoffs: knowledge. You might save on salaries, but you lose a lot of learning.Read more →