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We can't build a team or organization that's different from us. We can't make them into something we're not. Failing to follow this principle is the single biggest reason that so many team and organization change and improvement efforts flounder or fail. The changes and improvements we try to make to others must ring true to the changes and improvements we're also trying to make to ourselves.

Let's face it, major organizational change is tough enough when times are good, but when they are bad and going south like now, it is doubly hard. People go into survival mode. Managers tend to become more hierarchical. The result is the change process can slow down or stall. Given the dire need for change that many companies now have, this clearly is a huge problem.

As time passes by, people and things change. Now, what if time passes by and people change, but things that should change, don't?\n\nIt is not a stationary relic I'm talking about. I'm talking about the brand new dinosaur on the block - the classical management pyramid. Time has come to dismantle it and adapt to a new evolutionary and unstructured model that leverages the team effect to ensure that companies can lead change rather play catch up or be left behind.

Facebook and Twitter don't have the power to change the world, says notable author Malcom Gladwell, whose book "The Tipping Point" detailed how little things can make a big difference. He made this controversial, counter-intuitive argument via an article in published in The New Yorker titled "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Twittered."

In the present Xpragmatic View, we further explore the concept of organisational change as a management instrument triggering innovation and process improvement. Assuming the basic promise of this concept is correct, what type of organisational change do we have to look for?

In the mid-1990s, productivity growth accelerated sharply in the U.S. economy. In this paper, we identify several other industry-level changes that have occurred during the same time and argue that they are consistent with an increased use of information technology (IT). We use case studies to illustrate how IT has enabled firms to more rapidly replicate improved business processes throughout an organization, thereby not only increasing productivity but also market share and market value. We then empirically document a substantial increase in turbulence starting in the 1990s, as measured by the average intra-industry rank change in sales, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), and other metrics. In particular, we find that IT-intensive industries account for most of this increase in turbulence, especially after 1995. In addition, we find that IT-intensive industries became more concentrated than non IT-intensive industries after 1995, reversing the previous trend. The combination of increased turbulence and concentration, especially among IT-intensive industries, is consistent with recent theories of hypercompetition as well as Schumpeterian creative destruction. We conclude that the improved ability of firms to replicate business innovations has changed the nature of business competition.

One theme persistently comes up whenever I talk social media, either inside my workplace or outside. This is "culture change." When talking about catalyzing adoption of social media within the enterprise, at some point, someone will predictably say something like, "the most important thing is to get the culture to change."

Thoughts on Enterprise 2.0 and Corporate Culture Change

"We live in an age where emergent technologies continue to have massive effects on business and society. Rising complexity requires companies and economies to cope with increasingly interlocking systems. If we keep on considering systems in a traditional, isolated way, this would lead to a totally locked view of business. This new hyper-connected nature of information entails an unprecedented change in business and societal environments. One major consequence for companies is the imperative to learn to anticipate those changes as well as to successfully adapt to them, or being at risk of disappearing."

"You can smell the fresh paint as companies the world over complete their post-recession overhauls. Few business organizations, functions, and processes have escaped this rethink, which is meant to fortify organizations before the next downturn comes At the risk of stirring a hornet's nest, I'd like to ask one question: How many of us CEOs included, as part of the rethink, changes to the CEO's role and responsibilities? "

Gartner research analysts recently convened to discuss the changing nature of work and table some predictions for the coming decade. Their consensus view was that chaotic, distributed and ad-hoc teams of people, along with blurred organizational boundaries, would become the norm for most modes of work.

"I'd like to talk to you about a big project," the woman told me on the phone. "We need to change our culture."

In life and in business, agility is a major advantage. However, in life it seems to come more or less naturally, while in business it seems an impossible dream. Some thoughts on change.

Technology has dramatically changed our world. However, most often, these changes were not planned for or expected. In a similar way, when we try using technology to drive change, results are in general highly unpredictable.

Implementing change in an organisation is difficult, very difficult. There are numerous reasons or excuses for failure. However, the primary reason for failure is choosing the wrong destination.

About half a century ago, Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker" to describe a new class of employee whose basic means of production was no longer capital, land, or labor but, rather, the productive use of knowledge. Today, these knowledge workers, who might better be called professionals, represent a large and growing percentage of the employees of the world's biggest corporations. In industries such as financial services, health care, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and media and entertainment, professionals now account for 25 percent or more of the workforce and, in some cases, undertake most typical key line activities. These talented people are the innovators of new business ideas. They make it possible for companies to deal with today's rapidly changing and uncertain business environment, and they produce and manage the intangible assets that are the primary way companies in a wide array of industries create value.

"If organizational transformations are to succeed, change can't be thought of as a single, standardized process."

If the human race wants to survive on this planet, it will have to change its behaviour, its institutions, its government structures and its way of doing business. The chaordic theory carries the promise of the better organisational approach that will support this. Can it really work that way?

In most management practices, we only take into account what's visible. We address the problem at hand. However, what's not visible is often much more important since it will guide us to the real opportunity for relevant change.

I rarely come across leaders who advocate wholesale organizational redesign or use it as a way to support their people and business. When organizational strategy changes, structures, roles, and functions should be realigned with the new objectives. This doesn't always happen, with the result that responsibilities can be overlooked, staffing can be inappropriate, and people - and even functions - can work against each other.