Category: Change and Transformation
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The Growing Immunity To ‘Change Management Bullshit’
In an era of competing and conflicting crises few things are certain. One thing we can count on though is our organisational ability to cope with change is going to be stretched to breaking point. This is concerning as our track record in delivering change in a more stable past has often been less than […]
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How To Make A Paradigm Shift
Last week I was in Amsterdam with the Disruptive Innovators Network (you can read my daily updates, here, here, and here) and it got me thinking about how we make the shift from current behaviours and ways of operating. Travelling across the city you’d think Amsterdam had been designed in a lab rather than being […]
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Whatever You Do Today, Don’t Start A Transformation Programme
New research indicates that corporate transformations have a 78% failure rate. The default position is that most top down change programmes will fail. Smaller, well focused, spreadable changes, which are introduced on an ongoing basis in an inconspicuous way trump big change almost every time.
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The People Vs The System – and Why The People Rarely Win
What if we overstate the effect of the people in our organisations, and we spend too much time addressing what they feel and think without addressing the more complex, systemic problems that influence how they perform or behave?
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Moving From ‘Big Change That Rarely Happens’ To ‘Small Change That Always Does’
We’re obsessed with big change, but what if we’re underestimating the power of the small changes that lie more easily within our reach?
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How (Not) To Change Someone’s Mind
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~John Kenneth Galbraith We live in a perpetual echo chamber. We follow the people we like and agree with on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. We read the news sites that […]
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Why We Need To Learn To Unlearn
Why do we persist in presenting plans that offer the illusion of certainty but are bound to be disrupted? Unlearning is the process of letting go, reframing, and moving away from once-useful mindsets and acquired behaviours that were effective in the past, but now limit success.
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What Face Masks Teach Us About Behaviour Change
Ultimately the innovation and change process begins and ends with one basic premise – listen first
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COVID Accelerates Everything: Including Change Fatigue
How can our organisations cope with a coming tsunami of burnt out workers? The signs are all there that the transition to hybrid/remote working is not as painless as the Zoom and Teams enthusiasts are making out.
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How To Resist Corporate Hoarding
Many companies are still using software built or purchased from a time when Blockbuster were fining us for late returned videos. Most of the companies we admire for their innovation , your Amazons, your Netflixes or your Apples have no such legacy ways of working holding them back. They either cleared them out years ago […]
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The Complex Problem With Big Change Programmes
Change-washing (noun): the process of introducing reforms that purport to bring about change but fail to result in any substantive shifts in systems, services or culture. — Thea Snow and Abe Greenspoon One of the unfortunate side-effects of writing a post that becomes popular such as People Aren’t Sick Of Change. They’re Just Sick Of […]
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People Aren’t Sick Of Change. They’re Just Sick Of Change Programmes
I don’t buy into the idea that humans intrinsically hate change. I just think that by the time we’re in our 30s or 40s, lots of our experience of change – particularly in the workplace – has been more negative than positive. Instinctively rejecting it is a learned response – Tom Cheesewright People , we […]
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Enabling A New World Of Public Service Delivery
The UK now finds itself in its lowest-ever position in the Global Trust Index, just one place off the bottom, with only Russia below it – Ed Williams President and CEO, EMEA The results are in: Nobody trusts anyone anymore. The 2020 update of the Edelman Trust Barometer, which aims to survey trust and credibility […]
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Why We Don’t Collaborate
Everyone says they love collaboration. Our open offices are designed to encourage collaboration. We recruit for people who are collaborative in nature. The digital tools we use are aimed at fostering greater collaboration. We promote the benefits of collaboration , or even co-creation, with our customers and service users. Collaboration has replaced innovation as the […]
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The Social Sector Must Rebuild Trust Through Equal Partnerships
This is a edited version of an article originally written for Inside Housing There is a growing realisation that many of our social institutions and public services have run their course. Communities need something different from what’s currently on offer. We could be at the tipping point, the moment when future relationships between citizens and […]
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Who Really Wins From Digital Transformation?
The birth of the change management movement began in the 1960s and 70s – when big consultancy began to see a vast new market – convincing organisations of the benefits of ‘transformation’. Alongside this came the development of a distinctive, pseudo-scientific language of change which the consultants needed to pitch themselves to new clients. It […]
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If We Want Different Relationships, The Doing Must Be New And Different Too
You can’t change a relationship without actually changing your behaviour.
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Avoiding The Yo-Yo Effect of ‘Corporate Change Convulsions’
Speeches you never hear at a corporate conference: “….. Our Transformation Programme is going to be small and imperfect. We are going to do many small things that probably won’t work straight away.’ – Chris Bolton In the early 1960s, a New York housewife named Jean Nidetch began a weekly meeting with friends at her home to […]
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The Big Problem With Change Programmes
People don’t resist change, they resist bullshit – Peter Vander Auwera A friend of mine told me last week that their organisation was about to begin its third change management programme in just seven years. Each of the two preceding programmes had a number of things in common: People were unclear why a programme was needed in the […]
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Change, Transformation and Complex Problems: My Top 5 Posts of 2017
One of my 2017 resolutions was to blog more consistently. The glory days in terms of the readership and reach of this site peaked in 2014 before a decline in 15/16. The problem was lack of discipline. My blogging lesson learnt is you must set aside time to write and not be distracted by everything […]
Paul Taylor 