Photo by Arseny Togulev on Unsplash Max, the CEO, shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t commit to this spending now” he said. He faced his CFO and CTO, who were urging him to replace the old mainframe computer and adopt the recommended SaaS program that would integrate all function data within the national logistics business. “The board […]
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash No business owner intends to kill their business. But too often they do, unintentionally. The error is an act of misunderstanding. The aim was to improve the business, not kill it. The problem was that the people didn’t respond to the need or the way to improve. They simply saw it as meaningless […]
Photo by Ross Findon on Unsplash Leading change is one of the most important frequent functions of leadership, isn’t it? Ineffective leadership of change is a big contributor to change programs failing. Here’s where it fails: Inadequate planning and preparation. The reason for change has not been made clear nor compelling. The frequent supportive communication, coaching, patience and […]
Photo by August Politis on Unsplash Graeme came back from his industry conference with the idea he believed was crucial for his company’s competitive sustainability. They had to achieve ISO 9001:2015 certification as soon as possible. Graeme’s company, let’s call it Acme Engineering, had 280 full time staff and had been operating for 20 years. Acme was tendering […]
Photo by Will Suddreth on Unsplash Case 1 Max is the CEO of a mid-size engineering company. He’d just attended a conference of engineers examining the future of fabrication. He was brimming with ideas. Calling a meeting of his direct reports on his return, he required them to come up with a plan to reduce costs by 20%, […]
We are all facing continuous, even disruptive change or improvement, aren’t we? We have all experienced a natural resistance and even rejection of change, especially if it is forced upon us. Whilst most of us eventually accept change that makes sense, some of us are very resistant for a variety of reasons, such as the […]
Avoidance of dealing with unacceptable behaviour and performance can be a big part of the culture of many organisations across commerce and government, costing them loss of talent, productivity, innovation and opportunity. This avoidance culture leaves the organisation vulnerable to serious disruption by competitors who are more agile and performance focused with a culture of […]
If the collective brain doesn’t rewire sufficiently to embrace the desired change, the result is failure to change. It’s that simple. The many elaborate change models used by organisations have the astoundingly consistent failure rate of 70%. Most of those models do not adequately address the reality that change will not occur in the person […]
People ask their leaders for certainty, even when the evidence is that certainty is a rarity. Think of the experts who predicted that Trump couldn’t win. It is likely that most of our predictions will be wrong in some way, sometimes significantly. How then can we as leaders move forward into an unknown, unreliable future, […]
The new CEO of the privately held engineering business was faced with a challenge – how to restructure to cope with the declining resource sector. The previous CEO had built the business as the resource sector boomed and had retired in time to avoid the inevitable adjustments now faced by his successor. The new CEO, […]
