Ten ways to prevent change project failure

Here are my top ten reasons for change project failure.

These are in no particular order.

I hope that you will recognise some of these in your own organisations. If not, try asking your colleagues to take a look at this list and ask them which of these they see within the organisation.

You never know, the debate that follows may lead you to some improvements in how you implement change.

Here they are:

1. Top down business system design – CEO’s cannot understand why their organisations do not wholeheartedly embrace their change ideas.
2. Constantly changing priorities – Ideas driven senior managers giving their teams so many things to think about that none of the previous (good) ideas find time to be implemented.
3. Dogged adherence to a rigid and over specified plan – i.e. Three years plans specified in step by step detail from the outset. Halfway through the project we notice that business needs have moved on.
4. Hierarchical command and control structures. – Failure to recognise that middle managers are the ones getting stuff done. Give them time, trust and space.
5. Strategic IT objectives led by technology availability instead of customer needs. – We bought a new software package, now what can we do with it?
6. Inadequate levels of training, confidence and systems knowledge among operations staff – Not knowing what the existing system is capable of is not really a good excuse for buying a new one.
7. Automation of existing (and inadequate) business processes, overlooking the opportunity to change them before / during the project. – i.e. Taking a paper based process and forcing it into a case management system – anyone remember online PDF forms?
8. Fragmented systems for common functions across different departments and hierarchies. – It starts with CEO’s who are given a superior back office support service compared to the everyday member of staff. It results in an inability to produce meaningful or complete management information across the organisation.
9.  Failure to look for obvious efficiency gains. This is about Old Ways of Working v’s New ways of Working. – Have you explored flexible working, shift patterns, incentive programmes and performance management as options before you change the fundamental systems you use?
10. Outsourced suppliers with overly complex and rigidly applied SLA’s. – Short term cost savings at the start of a contract lull us into a false sense of security about the future. Failure to negotiate flexibility into the later years of a contract comes back to haunt us.

My feelings about this list have changed over time, some items come and others go, but this set is always at the core of the list.

Have a great week.

Adam.


About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

How to choose between a Change Manager and a Project Manager

Project Management and Change Management are often used interchangeably. The confusion is interesting because getting the Project and Change teams to work well with each other pays off significantly.

Making the decision about which of these approaches to take at the earliest opportunity will save us a lot of time and effort later on. The choice is all about how easy it is for people to understand what has to be done.

• Change Management is an additional level of discipline based on the complexity of the activity being undertaken.
• Project management is used if the tasks or changes are simple and commonly understood. When the changes become more complex, the need for increased discipline with respect to Change Management becomes important.

In short, Change Management serves as another layer of discipline over Project Management in complex transformations.

The most frequent practical difference is in the level of communication needed.

Leaders who initiate real change spend time communicating the change before it gets rolled out. This is the key to minimising resistance. The temptation to speed through the communication; or to assume that others already know what needs to happen, is often what seems to get things derailed. This is entirely understandable because senior staff have spent much time thinking about change before they try to implement, and it is very easy to assume others know as much as us at this stage.

Change Management allows for a greater degree of communication, involvement and participation in the process. It also demonstrates flexibility and patience when there appears to be initial resistance. In this way success is much more likely.

Project Managers are more like scientists and Change Managers are more like artists.
Have a great week.

Adam.


About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Chaos as a change Agent.

No Way Back

There are times in any change project when we have to decide how to migrate from the status quo to a new way of working.

Most projects try to migrate smoothly, one step at a time, from A to B, but sometimes there is pressure to do things more quickly.

There may be a wolf at the door, and to hesitate will guarantee failure.

This where the idea of catastrophe theory is useful.

It goes something like this.

If we want to change quickly, really change, we have to stop doing the things that we used to do and only do the new thing. However, some people like the old ways so much that they keep going back to them. Even when they have learned to do new things.

To prevent this we need to cut off the route to the old ways and only allow the new ones. With no way back we can only operate in the new ways.

So here is what we need to do when rapid change is needed.

When the team is ready, i.e. it has learned the new ways, we permanently cut off the old ways. For example, close down the old system, throw away the old furniture, lock the doors in the old office, shut down and archive the old website, etc.

If you leave any return route open, people will work hard to find and use it. They will plead the case for audit, for learning from old ways, for recycling useful stuff etc. Resist these where you can, they are the foundations for wholesale reversion to old ways and your opportunity to implement change a second time around may never happen.

Have a great week.

Adam.

About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Leadership Styles c900 AD

Mas‘ūdī was a geographer / historian from Baghdād, born around 890 AD he died in Egypt in 956 AD.

He travelled extensively, studying the great religions of the world. He observed, recorded and reported his findings in many texts including The Meadows of Gold.

Here is his advice on communication and leadership.

“Having found pearls of every kind and of every shade scattered here and there, gather them into a necklace and make them a precious piece of jewellery, an object of great worth that its purchaser will cherish with great care.”


What are you waiting for? Start gathering pearls.

Adam.

About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Turning negative thoughts into positive action

I have been an interim manager for more than 10 years and…

I was recently chatting with a potential client about my assignments.

We identified eight projects where ideas, influence, persuasion and a positive outlook were key factors.

Here is the list.

• How to improve the control of c600 projects with a £50m spend?
• What team structure is appropriate to improve ICT service delivery?
• What do we do next after the failure of a £800k ICT project?

• How do we prioritise an uncoordinated series of ICT projects, many of which lack sponsorship or clear resource allocation?
• How to resource and shape an ambitious plan to modernise the way front line services are delivered?
• In a digital world where paper records management is being replaced by digital information assets, how do we decide what to keep?
• What behaviours do we need to change to bring together disparate silo-based teams for collaboration on a corporate wide project?
• How do we identify, analyse and monitor £1.6bn of ICT related spending across the organisation.

It is a pretty diverse list of challenges but I was sure there were some common actions and behaviours. It took a while but here is what I came up with:

• Close in on an idea that can be understood by all.
• Create a compelling story of what could be when the idea is implemented and then promote and socialise the values and deliverables. Don’t over-promise.
• Leadership. Accept the responsibility for making it happen.
• Persuasion. At all levels.
• Negotiate win:win deliverables. Support others and trust that they will support you.

It then occurred to me that we all act this way unconsciously when things are going well.

This is because we tend to be more positive and collaborative when times are good, but more defensive, suspicious and negative when things are not going so well.

I then realised that if we behave as if things are going well it will have a huge influence on our performance, happiness and success. If we want success we cannot allow a single negative thought or action to undermine our ability to achieve it.

Here are three ideas that can help make this happen.

• Separate yourself from negativity by looking at it from the outside. Imagine how others would help you address your issue. This instantly reduces your negativity.
• Use words like “interesting”, “challenging”, “opportunity”. These have an effect on your thinking. The negativity is lessened.
• Focus on the now. What needs to happen in the next day / hour / minute. Once this is done you are one small step further forward. It is impossible to feel negative if you are truly in the present moment.

Have a great week.

Adam


About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Leadership Styles c415 BC

Herodotus

Herodotus was a Greek, writing from Egypt, almost 2500 years ago.

Here is a summary of his report of three Greeks who were debating the optimum form of government (or leadership) for Persia; i.e. monarchy, oligarchy or democracy.

Otanes, spoke first by rejecting monarchy and proposing democracy. “The typical vices of a monarch are envy and pride; envy because it is a natural human weakness and, pride, because excessive wealth and power lead to the delusion that he is something more than a man…contrast this with the rule of the people; first it has the finest of all names to describe it – equality under law; and, secondly, the people in power do none of the things that monarchs do. …a magistrate is appointed…and is held responsible for his conduct in office and all questions are put up for open debate.”

Then Megabyzus rejected democracy and spoke on behalf of oligarchy. “In so far as Otanes spoke in favour of abolishing monarchy I agree with him; but he is wrong in asking us to transfer political power to the people. The masses are a feckless lot – nowhere will you find more ignorance or irresponsibility or violence. It would be an intolerable thing to escape the murderous caprice of a king, only to be caught by the equally wanton brutality of the rabble. …..let us ourselves choose a certain number of the best men in the country, and give them political power…..the best men will produce the best policy.

The third to speak was Darius. “I support all of Megabyzus’ remarks about the masses but I do not agree with what he said about oligarchy. Take the three forms of government we are considering – democracy, oligarchy and monarchy….and suppose each of them to be the best of its kind; I maintain that the third is greatly preferable to the other two. One ruler….provided he is the best. In an oligarchy…men…compete for distinction..each of them wants to get to the top to see his own proposals carried…quarrels lead to civil wars and then to bloodshed. In a democracy, malpractices…and corrupt dealings in government services lead not to private feuds, but to close personal associations, the men responsible…mutually supporting one another…until someone comes forward as the peoples champion…this wins him the admiration of the mob…and as a result he soon finds himself entrusted with absolute power – all of which is another proof that the best form of government is monarchy”
I will not spoil the story by telling you how it ends. You’ll have to read that for yourself.

I have repeated the story here because it occurs to me that it is 2500 years on we are still debating the merits of leadership styles. Plus ça change, but it made me ask:

• With which of these three do I sympathise?
• Which is dominant in my organisation?

Let me know what you think.

Adam.

About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Cutting costs without killing business

How do we decide what costs we should cut when making efficiency savings in our businesses?

There are many ways to do this, but here is a method that you can use with staff, in a workshop environment. How to generate ideas that have real commitment and understanding from the managers who will have to implement them.

Their ideas , after all, are the ones that will work best.

The principle is to identify the activities at the centre of your business success. The things that you do that your customers really value. The reason that they use and recommend your services.

Think about customers for a while and then ask these questions
When customers use our services:

• What are the Must Have deliverables?
• What do we Need to Do to keep those deliverables consistent and successful?
• What do we do that is a Nice to Have that does not directly contribute to the above?

Look at every activity that the team delivers during a typical business month, list them out, summarise them on a chart and then vote.

Here is the rule for the voting. – At least 75% of the team must agree that an activity belongs in a category. Only debate those items that do not achieve immediate agreement. If you can not agree then the activity defaults to the least important of its disputed categories. Pin the chart to the office wall to remind yourself and the team of the decision taken. It sets out the scope of what you have to do next.

Now you have a list of activities for potential cost cutting. Anything in the Nice to Have category is a target. Everything else is safe for now.

When you reach your target cost reduction you have to congratulate the team for achieving it. If the target is not reached you need to ask them to try again or make some unpopular decisions yourself.


About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Eight steps for successful change management

Eight Steps

Getting change right is difficult. Doing it wrong is much easier.
Here are eight steps that you can take to try to avoid making the mistakes of any number of change programmes.
These tips are in not in any particular order, they all seem to appear wherever change is happening.

1. Keep up a sense of urgency. Make sure the managers who plan the change and the implementers who deliver have a real focus on the deadline.
2. Continue to use a powerful leadership team throughout. Try not to distract them. This group is responsible, but also have authority. It needs to look and work like a team.
3. Keep to the vision and roadmap for the change. Don’t deviate. Make sure this is expressed in simple teams that everyone can understand.
4. Keep communicating the vision in every available channel until the message has been understood. You’ll know when this has happened because others who are not in the leadership team will spontaneously talk about the vision, using their own words.
5. Try not to put too many barriers in the way of managers who are changing systems or structures. Remember to try to undermine resistance and encourage a little risk taking.
6. Identify, create and find short term wins.  Do make a noise about them and congratulate the team that delivered.
7. Don’t forget to use the quick wins to produce more change. Success increases the credibility of further moves toward the eventual goal. (and don’t use this as an excuse to move the goalposts).
8. Be persistent to embed the changes firmly into the business culture . When new behaviours are embedded they will not degrade/revert to the old ways. The lesson here is to ensure that the end of change is not declared too early. Continue to lead and manage until the changes are fixed.

These are eight places where change is typically derailed. Getting most of these right will put you way ahead of the competition.


About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Increasing your network traffic

Have you ever wondered why there is only one eBay or only one Wikipedia?

This is about the imbalance that popularity causes on the internet. It is as if there are only one or two places for each category of things.

This seems to be counter-intuitive because the Internet is the biggest thing humankind has ever created, and there should be enough space for all of us to be visible. But we are not.

This is all down to a thing called a power curve. The characteristic of this curve is that the imbalance of your visibility on the web becomes more extreme as your ranking decreases. The highest few participants in any sector enjoy most of the visibility and consequently most of the traffic.

The formula is simple. The person in the second position has roughly 1/2 of the visibility of the first. The third person 1/3, fourth 1/4 etc. i.e. The nth person has 1/nth chance of being visible. Therefore, this means that if you are ranked 15th or more you are effectively invisible.

The way to use this is to specialise. Each sector or category of a network has it’s dominant voices. To be visible, you need to be in a sector that recognises you as a specialist, not a generalist.

Breaking into an established sector is difficult due to the power law dominance of the leading voices. We either wait for them to fall from grace or we need to invent our own sectors.


About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Do you need Cloud Computing?

Work Anywhere

Cloud computing is a term that still means very little to most non techie's. You may also hear staff saying that your business needs Citrix, (one of the most common enablers).

So what is this all about?

The compelling advantages of cloud computing can be summarised as follows:

• It gives us flexibility about what technology we use.
• It means that we can access technology from wherever we happen to be
• It reduces the costs of IT support and our technology licensing costs.

What types are there?

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Cloud Computing are usually interchangeable as far as end users are concerned.

Cloud computing is generally described as on-line applications, either available to anyone or provided to us by an organisation to which we belong.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a technology that allows users to access their own work desktop from any location.

To end users VDI and Cloud Computing can appear to be identical, but VDI has two forms; on-line or off-line.

On-line means that a user connects to a data centre and is presented with their usual desktop but;

• what happens if the user can not find a connection?
• the system can be slow if connections are made infrequently. This is because a backlog of system updates usually takes priority and can delay the connection. A two / three minute wait for a connection can be very frustrating for users.

Off-line means that the user will be downloading data and applications to their hardware. They use it during the day and then synchronise with a data centre sometime later. This is convenient where;

• Real time communications are not needed for the role.
• The applications use static data and activity can be batch processed without affecting service levels.
• Geography means that connectivity is erratic

Is this good for all users?

That depends on the type of work a user is doing. Do they need their whole desktop or just parts of it? Are they a Remote User or a Mobile User?

• Remote users want to do real work, on a full desktop, with all their apps and communications options. Homeworkers fall into this category because they want to use the same desktop at home and in the office.
• Mobile workers want to do some work, with some of their applications and they want to do it on the move, typically between appointments. They need to view and update their data from whatever device they happen to be using, usually a Smart Phone,  iPad or similar device.

Both user types want to use cloud computing, but in entirely different ways.

Will it work with your IT?

Generally, yes. The tools exist to virtualise most applications or a workable compromise will be available. If your organisation has a partnership arrangement of some kind, go and have a conversation  about their approach to Cloud Computing. Most major vendors have their own unique strategies on this subject and understanding their approach from the start will save you time later on.

What about my Network?

The network will be affected. Typically Cloud Computing will;

• change network traffic patterns
• change the way users connect to the systems they use
• change the solutions for network and data security

basically it affects everything. So, don't select an on-line application and expect it to be live the next day. The lead times could be long and complex.

Is it Secure?

Of course, all technology can be made secure. And the technical bit is relatively easy compared to the contractual bit. Your biggest security risks will be:

• How technology partners handle your data
• The potential for end users to misuse, share, loose, steal and corrupt your data.

But, do not fall into the trap of spending all your planning time worrying about the theoretical misuse of your data. Ensure you know how to realise the benefits first, then consider the most likely risks of your chosen solution.

Do I need a policy for Cloud Computing?

Yes. Even if you have no cloud based applications, some employees will be using Google Apps or social networking sites to share data. It is human nature to use convenient tools and it will happen whether we like it or not. Making sure employees know what is allowed is a sensible precaution.

What are the Benefits?

This could be a very long list. For brevity the key ones are:

• Users can work in any location.
• Technology performance can be improved because data centre servers are much more powerful than desktops.
• Users can personalise their experience. This makes adoption, training and accuracy much easier to achieve.
• Hardware updating is easier when it is based at the data-centre. All users are updated simultaneously.
• It improves data security. Back-up is centralised. Data is not usually stored on the users hardware.
• The hardware costs less because the computing power is in the centre, not with the users.

Today's Blog was inspired by Alan Lee-Bourke. A very knowledgeable and helpful guy who has probably forgotten more than I have ever known about cloud computing.

About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

I like the idea that change is mostly about Leadership.

As a practitioner I have discovered that genuinely involving staff in implementing the change is the key.

Put simply, leading others to change themselves works best in the long-term.

A useful summary of the process I generally follow:

1. Establish a sense of purpose. What is there to gain / What happens to us if we do not act.
2. Identify early adopters and work with them from day one. Involve everyone, yes everyone, at all levels. Spot the “negatives” and try to tune into and comment on their chatter. Adopt strategies to diffuse it.
3. Create a “story” about what work will be like when the change has happened. A realistic, believable, deliverable story. Tell it to everyone, at all levels, every day, until you are thoroughly bored with hearing it. Then tell it some more.
4. Communicate, communicate, communicate, in appropriate ways at all levels. Have the formal and verbal communications originating from the team where possible. Respond to all comments received.
5. Free up the early adopters to act. Give them permission to do stuff that helps the change happen. Change is unsettling and unnerving, your permission will give the team confidence to act on their own ideas. Be ready to help out when they make a mistake, because they will.
6. Take every opportunity to highlight short-term wins. Publicly, but most importantly, privately within the team and at one to one reviews.
7. Consolidate all the improvements and at some point declare the change-process ended……. Then encourage the team to keep it going. They will do so even though the “end” has arrived.
8. Make sure the new ways of working stick. Now is the time to target the remaining negative voices in the team.

Finally, when staff and managers say that they are afraid of change, what they usually mean is that they fear that change will be imposed upon them. They usually recognise that change will happen, but are unsure about what to do.

This is why change is really about good Leadership.

About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Excellent Customer Service

Here is a great story that came back to me during a recent conversation about customer service.

My ability to recall it is even more remarkable because it happened over 10 years ago.

A hotel in San Francisco, in winter.

I booked in early and left my bag in the lobby. Unfortunately it was mistakenly loaded into a car with another departing guests baggage. The other guest drove 300 miles before  realising the mistake, he called the hotel.

The hotel called me (at work) and sent someone to my office to discuss what to do next. They took my details and checked out my fashion sense (none), went shopping, delivered a case with enough kit for 2 days and then sent a courier to collect the original case.

I continued my stay unaffected by this possible calamity.

That was not the end of the story. At the end of my stay they insisted on a complimentary car to the airport and there were further apologies from various staff who were all unconnected, but familiar with the story.

I have a habit of calling these events Heroic Rescues. They stay with one for a long time as a good experience, not a bad one.

So if any of you need a recommendation for a great hotel in San Francisco please let me know.

About the Author: Adam Blackie is a professional Interim Manager who leads service delivery teams through their change programmes. He works with CEO’s and their Boards in the UK to change the way technology is used by staff and their customers.

Futurology

There are a number of drivers of global business change coming our way in the next 10 years or so.
The key ones as I see it at the moment are:

• West – East power-shift, especially the growing dominance of the East in financial markets.

• Use of internet and Telecom technologies, typically giving smaller businesses the same computing power as their larger rivals and also empowering small business units within centrally controlled organisations to “do their own thing”.

• Dis-intermediation of information flows, how we look for and receive news will change. It will be immediate and through smaller distribution channels. Big business and government control over news distribution will become a thing of the past.

• Ageing populations will affect all business models and markets. How will the world cope with the largest ever proportion of over 60′s?

• A move away from money focus to individual and spiritual values. We’ve had 80′s greed, 90′s prosperity and 00′s austerity. The developed world has more stuff than it can use. We will move away from materialism in favour of self-development.

The most vulnerable part of every organisation will be whatever delivery mechanism it has to offer services and products to customers.

Change will increase in frequency and complexity as the global trends identified above take hold. The most successful businesses will predict / react to these changes and alter their value delivery systems and processes appropriately.

Those that are blind to the changes will fail.

What takes 1500 Lifetimes?

1500 Lifetimes

In a working world where we can create and save terabytes of data every day, we need a way to decide what data we should keep.

The dangers of keeping too much stuff is documented elsewhere, but the key to success is great information management.
But this is a bit dull for most of us.  It's a bit like telling teenagers to tidy their rooms.A good idea but ineffective.

In short the benefits of keeping the right stuff are;

Reduced risk of reputation damage to the organisation

• Improved knowledge sharing and cross team working
• Reduced costs of IT storage and security

I often see situations where people are not aware of their responsibilities and where record keeping disciplines have broken down or just don't exist.

Question - How do you engage staff with this dry as bones subject?

Answer - Making it easy to understand and engage with.

Here is how I do it.

What takes 1500 Lifetimes? Our Organisation stores 80,000 Gigabytes of email and personal data. An average 250 page novel is 3 Megabytes of data. This is equal to 26,500,000 novels. It takes 10 hours to read a novel. It would take 265,000,000 working hours to read all our data. This is more than 1500 working lifetimes. And we have just over 1000 employees

Issue your version of the above to the Board on a slow day. Ask two questions:

• Is it all needed?
• What is the risk of storing and securing this if no one is likely to use it?

That should get their attention.  The rest is Information Management.

Can we measure leadership?

A good balance?

Leadership is different to management. We can all agree on that. Much is written on this subject and I will not repeat it here.

What I do want to talk about is how Leadership is often about the balance that we maintain between the Tasks we need to do, the Team's ability to work together  and the needs of Individuals in their work context.

As a Leader we have to balance these three.

• Tasks - We all have a long list of tasks to do. If this is our first thought at work then we will be under-cooking our responsibilities in the other two categories. If a leader is doing a lot of the tasks it's a good sign they are a micro-manager. That does not go down well with the .....

• Teams - Often overlooked. The Team delivers the task. When the team is working well together they do more. If there is conflict or poor communication they might do less; or worse, more of the wrong stuff. Teams consist of ......

• Individuals - We all have our own needs and issues. If these distract us too much we can not devote ourselves to the team. Good leaders resolve issues for people leaving them motivated to take part.

Here is a simple test that you can do if you are a leader.

Ask team members to draw three overlapping circles, each representing their impression of how Task, Team and Individual needs are satisfied for their role. The size of the circles they draw should represent how satisfied they are with each aspect of their role.

The results might surprise you.

Communicate less, more

Extra Communications

This subject has interested me for some years.
As a change manager and a father of two I am constantly surprised by the difficulty we have in communicating effectively.
If I had a pound / dollar for every time a senior manager said “I cannot understand why my staff are not wholeheartedly embracing my changes” I would be a richer man.
Here are some techniques that have helped me as a change leader, (but I have not necessarily always stuck to, because THIS IS REALLY HARD stuff):

• START BY LISTENING. Let the person or group you are communicating with have their say first. Be supportive and show that you have heard them and will act if necessary. This gives them a chance to clear their minds of their own agenda and then they are able to listen to you.
• Make sure the listener is READY TO HEAR, are they mentally in a place to absorb what you are communicating? Fear of change, anxiety for their project / team and work overload are typical indicators to look out for. If these exist at the time of the communication, then assume that those listening will not hear.
• Keep it simple. Communicate ONE IDEA AT A TIME. As soon as we communicate a new idea recipients start to process the implications. This fills their heads with their own dialogue. – Not a great time to introduce another new idea. This takes patience and some bravery (when will you get another chance to communicate?)
• REPEAT YOURSELF, lots of times, in different formats. A simple message repeated at every opportunity works well. Team briefings, company wide emails, intranet, blogs, wiki’s, notice boards, email footers, etc. In fact anywhere you can repeat the message is useful – so long as you are consistent and simple.
• KEEP REPEATING the message until you hear that “so and so” has had a similar idea. At that point start supporting their idea.  (It is no longer yours).

Repeating myself  is a technique that I use a lot. Some staff get the message straight away, others take longer, some never really understand. When you are really bored with repeating yourself, don’t stop, keep it up until…..
…..you see team members explaining to each other in their own words.
Now you know that you have communicated.
In short, communicate, less, more. Plant a seed then support and steer any conversations that make it grow.


This weeks inspiration -  Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show.

There are plenty of complex ways to define Change Management.

I try to keep it simple and easy to understand.

Good things often come in threes, so here is change defined by the ‘Rule of Three’.

 Change Management is how we transform business.

We can change the person, the team structure and/or the organisation’s attitudes and behaviours.
 
We have to decide which of these three areas we are changing and then move from point X to point Y. 

This is where the fun starts.
  
Change success can be defined in these three areas;

1.  Business Strategy or the Vision - this is about communication and leadership
2. Business Process or How do we get from here to there – this is about motivating  people to go on the journey
3. Organisational Behaviour or What the teams and people do next - this is about making it stick

Successful change project leaders recognise the above from day one.

Memories are the things on which we hang our identity.

I heard the title of this blog on the radio this morning. And it made me consider just how much and how I remember things.
We live in a sea of stimulus and human brains have developed to filter and sort the visual, audio, touch, smell and taste signals that we receive.

Otherwise our long-term memories would soon overflow. Our brain filters important stuff from the useful and ignores the ephemeral (mostly).

Our long-term memories shape our identity and drive the way in which we interact.

Now, imagine a brain that records everything that you ever experienced or said and made it available for review or re-use. You would replace your selective, intuitive and spontaneous identity with a search based, analytical and undoubtedly more complete version of yourself.

But would this be better?

Perceiving Identity

In the real world the foundations of perceived identity are physical interactions and the important first impressions these make on others.

In the virtual world our identity is a mix of social networking links, published  profiles, comments on websites and what others are saying about us.

And because we can research people before we meet them, the virtual identity is becoming the first impression.

Remembering

I have read that the internet never forgets. Everything is apparently being saved for re-use.

Our “mistakes” in the real world are quickly forgotten and therefore forgiven, but if they are now permanently stored, should we take more care about what we post on the internet? I don’t know, but it is something to think about.

I do know that many people are not yet aware that their on-line activity is creating a permanent virtual identity. This lack of awareness means that many will come to regret the permanency and quality of their accidental on-line reputation.



Todays picture is an original pencil drawing by, and reproduced here with permission from  JD Hillberry. www.JDHillberry.com

Good Stuff from Unpromising Ingredients

I had the misfortune of being laid up recently with a bad back, so first, thanks to those who sent good wishes. If any of you ever need an excellent Osteopath follow the link below.

To pass the day I spent some time catching up on my reading and came across a speech made by Stephen Fry, who you will all know as a contemporary comedy genius. However this speech was a serious one.

He was musing on the subject of self-help and improvability and how different nationalities deal with adversity. It was a discourse on a common American dictum as follows:

“If life gives you Lemons, make Lemonade.”

He went on to say that this is not just a call to make the best of a bad situation; it is really a call to enterprise, initiative and self-help to find ways to transform a disappointment into a success.

To understand the full meaning of this one needs to consider the recipe for Lemonade. It’s really simple; the juice of a Lemon with added sugar and water. From an unpromising start, some near free ingredients and some personal effort we can make something that our friends really appreciate.

It reminded me that sometimes the simplest solutions in life are the best ones.

And this will be why you might hear me talking about Making Lemonade.

Mark Rush. Healing hands. – www.baileyandrushosteopaths.co.uk