The 8 Step Process for Leading Change

30 years of research by leadership guru Dr. John Kotter have proven that 70% of all major change efforts in organizations fail. Why do they fail? Because organizations often do not take the holistic approach required to see the change through.

However, by following the 8 Step Process outlined by Professor Kotter, organizations can avoid failure and become adept at change. By improving their ability to change, organizations can increase their chances of success, both today and in the future. Without this ability to adapt continuously, organizations cannot thrive.

This question came up in an online seminar this morning. "How can I demonstrate the value of Informal Learning?"

First of all, understand that you're not buying informal learning. It's already going on in your organization. In fact, three-quarters of the learning on and about how to do one's job is informal.

The natural learning that occurs outside of classes and workshops is vital but it probably flies under your corporate radar. No manager is accountable; no department is committed to making improvements; there's no identifiable budget. Hence, one of the most important functions in an organization, keeping up with skills to prosper in the future, is left largely to chance.

Effective listening. Pattern recognition. TED video.

Chris Pirillo makes simple but powerful arguments to adding social tech to business.

Furthermore, we've found that contrary to what many CEOs assume, leadership is not really about delegating tasks and monitoring results; it is about imbuing the entire workforce with a sense of responsibility for the business. This applies mainly to knowledge organizations, but even production-oriented companies can benefit from having employees who feel more empowered and engaged.

If abdication of authority is to yield value for the corporation, however, individuals must be self-motivated. CSC Germany does this by allowing employees to work on the one of five topics that best utilizes their talents and excites their interest. This involves joining a topic community, such as the one focusing on strategy and innovation. Issues are discussed in these groups until all participants come to an agreement, and leadership within the groups shifts frequently, settling on individuals who have the most competence in the areas of focus and are accepted by others as leaders.

We call such practices "mutualism." It involves measuring workers not against revenue or other numerical goals, which we have observed to be ineffective as motivational tools, but against qualitative values such as trust, responsibility, and innovation. And it implies that leaders don't dictate vision or strategy; instead, they enable employees to create a common vision through, for example, off-sites for discussion of strategic issues and regular feedback and education. Hitting numerical goals has been the natural outcome.

Relaxation of control can benefit any knowledge company, but particularly in certain circumstances: when the organization begins to miss opportunities because it can't understand or respond to market demands; when work is impaired because employees feel excessively pressured and harbor dissatisfaction; and when crises imperil the business. Then mutualism is the best way to unleash the power of employees' creativity.

Teleconferencing is becoming extremely important to business in the 90's. Rising travel costs and a wide-spread emphasis on telecommuting will result in a dramatic increase in the number of teleconferences held each day.

Yet, unfortunately, the effectiveness of teleconferencing often fails to meet needs and expectation of telecommuters.

Meetings are an essential part of business and telecommuters still need to "meet". If they are meeting electronically, then we need to develop a methodology for facilitating distributed meetings. Running effective face-to-face meetings is difficult enough; managing effective telemeetings requires special training and tools.

TheVisual Telefacilitation Project at the Performing Graphics Company is researching ways in which visual representation can increase the effectiveness of teleconferencing. The technique currently being developed is the use of recorders for distributed meetings      visual telefaciltators      to provide a continuously updated record of the meeting discussion for all of the distributed participants.

Fred Lakein

Interaction Associates white paper on virtual meetings

Preview Gary Hamel's February 2009 article in the Harvard Business Review, Moon Shots for Management.In May 2008, a group of renowned scholars and business leaders gathered in Half Moon Bay, California, with a simple goal: to lay out an agenda for reinventing management in the 21st century. The two-day event, organized by the Management Lab with support from McKinsey & Company, brought together veteran management experts such as CK Prahalad, Henry Mintzberg, and Peter Senge

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind." ~ BUDDHA

While the Buddha may have said that over 2,500 years ago, today's neuroscience is helping us to understand the mind's complex hard-wired mechanisms with stunning speed.

A 2007 study, conducted by Norman Farb at the University of Toronto showed that most of us are not consciously focused and are on "auto-pilot" 46.9% of the time. Our minds are wandering, not attentive to the tasks at hand or on immediate outside experience, instead we're looking into our own thoughts.

In chaotic times, an executive's instinct may be to strive for greater efficiency by tightening control. But the truth is that relinquishing authority and giving employees considerable autonomy can boost innovation and success at knowledge firms, even during crises. Our research provides hard evidence that leaders who give in to the urge to clamp down can end up doing their companies a serious disservice.

Although business thinkers have long proposed that companies can engage workers and stimulate innovation by abdicating control-establishing nonhierarchical teams that focus on various issues and allowing those teams to make most of the company's decisions-guidance on implementing such a policy is lacking. So is evidence of its consequences. Indeed, companies that actually practice abdication of control are rare. Two of them, however, compellingly demonstrate that if it's implemented properly, this counterintuitive idea can dramatically improve results.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about flow as being in the moment. What does this really mean? How might it be relevant for the day to day challenges of organizational life?

How do we move in organizations? Do we give into tides of constraints dotting the shores with recognizable successes and failures? How do we discern the faint melodies of possibilities offered by shifts of how and who we are… and what place should we assume in the ecological menagerie of conditions, gifts, talents and opportunities enlightening our constellations?

Story-based tactics, processes and tools help us probe the complexity of organizational life.

We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers. * We will continue to make investment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions. * We will continue to measure our programs and the effectiveness of our investments analytically, to jettison those that do not provide acceptable returns, and to step up our investment in those that work best. We will continue to learn from both our successes and our failures.* We will make bold rather than timid investment decisions where we see a sufficient probability of gaining market leadership advantages. Some of these investments will pay off, others will not, and we will have learned another valuable lesson in either case. * When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our GAAP accounting and maximizing the present value of future cash flows, we'll take the cash flows. * We will share our strategic thought processes with you when we make bold choices (to the extent competitive pressures allow), so that you may evaluate for yourselves whether we are making rational long-term leadership investments. * We will work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture, particularly in a business incurring net losses. * We will balance our focus on growth with emphasis on long-term profitability and capital management. At this stage, we choose to prioritize growth because we believe that scale is central to achieving the potential of our business model. * We will continue to focus on hiring and retaining versatile and talented employees, and continue to weight their compensation to stock options rather than cash. We know our success will be largely affected by our ability to attract and retain a motivated employee base, each of whom must think like, and therefore must actually be, an owner

The 50

From speaking to friends, colleagues and recalling my own experiences I've complied The 50, a list of 50 things I believe every graphic design student should know on leaving college. Some of these points are obvious, others less so - but all are brief, digestible nuggets of wisdom that will hopefully go some way to making the transition from graduate to designer a little bit smoother.

Share the 50

The 50 has been crafted to be shared, spread and debated. Each point has been synthesised into just 140 characters (complete with a #the50 hash-tag) making them memorable and Twitter-friendly. Tweet your favourites, share them on Facebook, and send this URL to your friends - The 50 needs to be seen by as many students as possible - because feedback is crucial for the next step…

"What I'm here to tell you is that if it's like school, it doesn't work." Great, highly entertaining message from a guy who has taught at Yale, Stanford, and Northwestern. ****

Reading list

Amazon as great organizational architecture. Push the decisions to the base. The intelligence is out on the periphery. Empowerment through data.