Tag: change

Strategy, Architecture & Problem-Solving

Channel Memory

A couple of years ago, I was watching a TV series and towards the end of the 1st season, I thought that I recognised the plot, thinking they’d been lazy and borrowed some ideas. I’d been watching the Expanse, then on Netflix in the UK, but today sees the release of the 4th Season on…
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Tanker

Sunk cost

During the last few weeks of writing my last book, I realised that a related message to a different audience would be better delivered by video. So I started writing a training video. Then I stopped. I’d thought more about what I wanted to complete, who the customers would be and focussed on that. The…
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Hospital ward

How much is too much training?

I’m divided in this, but lean towards only brief training, just enough to inform them, rather than enough to practice.   On one hand, it pays to understand why change in general is necessary and specifically, why the change that you’re about to implement is necessary. Often I see professionals who spend time with the…
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calendar

How a Simple Change Can Bring Multiple Benefits

I’m often designing change programmes for large organisations. I’m an external consultant, an outsider coming into the organisation that already exists. There are already governance boards in place, whether for operational, financial or change governance. These boards happen on a regular basis, often on a set day of the month. As an outsider, I’m not…
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Ladder of citizen participation

Where Organisations Go Wrong

A lot happened in 1969. The moon landing, Led Zeppelin was released (the first LZ album), the maiden flight of the Boeing 747, and a paper by Sherry Arnstein. It’s difficult to say which is the most important of those above, but Arnstein’s paper is probably the least famous. Context I frequently speak with directors…
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Shhh!

Is this a bad time to talk?

There are times to make people feel comfortable, to help them feel that the change is achievable. There are also times when we need to remove that comfort and destabilise temporarily, so that they can work towards a solution. We commonly reintroduce comfort, or better still guide the audience towards discovering the own new level…
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Automation of White Collar Jobs and Process Debt

Background Business Insider published an article on how automation may remove the need for people in white-collar roles. While the context of the article seems relevant, I found the choice of example to be very odd. Specifically Deliveroo’s creation of 25 redundancies in their ordering process. In fact, I think it more likely that process debt had…
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Applying Different Categories of Knowledge

Introduction We should be careful when we judge the effectiveness of others and reflecting on this can in turn help influence us in how we approach change activities. I’ll use this chart (shown in more detail further down) to describe the differences. First Day Effectiveness On numerous occasions, I’ve seen people judge others by their effectiveness on the first day at…
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The Change Stand-off in Innovation

For a long time now, I’ve had the view that we only have so much time to change an organisation before the organisation changes us. I’ve seen it happen with dynamic people that become subdued over time as they encounter obstacle after obstacle, resistance, red-tape and other forms of organisational resistance to change. Maintaining innovation, or rather the…
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