There seem to be two views on necessary business change within leadership teams: Step change (significant change in policy and attitude, especially one that results in an improvement and increase) is risky and implies disrupting repetitive processes that leaders have been rewarded for improving over time Change is something that can be delegated, like other…
How do companies keep up with or, better still, stay ahead of the curve with the ever-accelerating technological and cultural change that influences our world today? After all, the first text message was sent less than thirty years ago. Google has only been around for two decades, Facebook fifteen years and Twitter twelve years. Companies…
The new information technology platform was not perfect, but it was a huge leap forward in comparison to the old, now outdated and cumbersome system that they had before. Data, and specifically artificial intelligence about buying trends, had been impossible to retrieve previously – the new and more innovative digital foundation would now finally empower…
For effective organisational change initiatives to be realised within a company, the success of the intended intervention requires a select group of people representative of all levels in the company who model the expected new behaviours, advocate the change benefits and campaign others to get on board. Changing behaviours and relinquishing old habits for new…
“Business leaders are increasingly focusing on risks that threaten to disrupt the fundamental assumptions of their organisations’ strategies. Prioritising such risks has become increasingly crucial – these risks cannot be handled in typical organisational silos, and they can destroy sources of value creation for the business. Yet, they also have the potential to form the…
The temptation to set stretch targets to achieve company goals within a short period of time is indeed something that the most realistic of leaders cannot resist. There is, however, a certain limit to which such change initiatives can be actualised as real solutions, as most complex problems are hardly going to be solved within…
Managers are employed to accomplish very specific project requirements (e.g. a sales manager has to guide and inspire the sales team to reach certain targets that the organisation has set; a call-centre manager must ensure quality and speed to enable customers to understand and purchase projects or get resolution to problems they are experiencing, etc.)….
To the uninformed, change is an unnecessary hassle; to the informed, change is a necessary evil; to the few, change is what they thrive on! Those that form part of the “few” group see change as an opportunity to get better – to tweak company processes and systems for greater productivity, to enhance quality and…
There may be great excitement for most people when moving to a new place of residence – usually an upgrade on what one had previously – but this excitement is typically counter-balanced by the arduous task of packing and unpacking, sorting and throwing out and coping with a messy environment. Of particular irritation is the…
One of the major challenges in change initiatives, whether small or large in impact, is to deal with resistance amongst managers and employees. Even though resistance to change is a natural human phenomenon, resistance typically hinders progress and subsequently alignment to the new direction – it therefore needs to be addressed. One of the ways…
Clarity of direction is important for any company – without it, employees end up “doing” work activities rather than focusing their energy and time on mission-critical tasks. The meaning of work gets lost when employees end up doing work because it has to be done. At the same time, however, in the current turbulent environment…
“I don’t want to use the word ‘reorganisation’. Reorganisation to me is shuffling boxes, moving boxes around. Transformation means that you’re really fundamentally changing the way the organisation thinks, the way it responds and the way it leads. It’s a lot more than just playing with boxes” (Lou Gerstner) Successful implementation of significant and pervasive…
