Category: Change

Why Your Organization’s Strategic Change Starts With Your Calendar

“Strategic change doesn’t just start at the top. It starts with your calendar.”  says Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, in his book ‘Only the Paranoid Survive‘.

calendar-changeIn that he means that the change of focus from executives must immediately be reflected in the way they spend their time. The accustomed committees of the past might not make so much sense in the new picture. More time might need to be devoted to more pressing issues related to the new direction of the organization.

In addition, people will know immediately which are the meetings which are now removed from the calendar of the executive and which are the new activities that retain its focus, and this will induce change throughout the organization notwithstanding deeper change in processes, systems and products.

Changing one’s calendar or time usage requires tremendous discipline, will power and ability to change one’s ingrained habits. Not all leaders are capable of such feat.

If you have decided to transform the organization you lead, have you actually changed your calendar? Have you at least decided to stop going to half of your previous regular meetings?

Share

Why You Can’t Transform a Company Without Changing Its Management

When it comes to real, fundamental change, you can’t change an organization without changing its management. This applies both to changes due to the external environment (such as a major change in the key market serviced by the organization), or simply to changes linked to the change in size and nature of the organization as it grows or shrinks significantly.

changeThis has been my constant observation in all the organizations which I have known deeply enough, when they were faced by major changes.

“I’m not saying they have to pack up their desks and be replaced. I’m saying that they themselves, every one of them, needs to change to be more in tune with the mandates of the new environment. They may need to go back to school, they may need a new assignment, they may need to spend some years in a foreign post. They need to adapt. If they can’t or won’t, however, they will need to be replaced with others who are more in tune with the new world the company is heading to.”, says Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, in his book ‘Only the Paranoid Survive‘.

Indeed, the most mature executives will know when to change move beyond their comfort zone; some will do the effort and some won’t; at least they are then conscious that they need to move on. The worst situation of course is when executives are not even aware they need to change; or when they languish in the reminiscence of a great, cozy past. This can lead to disastrous situations.

If the organization you lead has to go through a major transformation, you need to change. Or to move on. Don’t think you can continue being what you were before!

Share

Why Giving Up Does Not Mean You Are Weak – It Means Go Find Another Way!

There is a quote around the internet: “Giving up doesn’t always mean you are weak; Sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go” – Unknown.

Giving-upThat’s of course not just an excuse for giving up. Sometimes it is really important and healthy to stop trying to force the natural evolution of the universe. And it has dawned on me over the years that what is destined to happen will happen somewhat easily; and that it is sometimes inadequate to try to tweak destiny.

Still this does not mean that we should not make a sizable effort to deliver what we think we can bring to the world. It just means that sometimes we need to figure out a different way. Or let time do its work. Losing a battle but not the war.

I would thus like to tweak slightly the quote: “Giving up doesn’t always mean you are weak; Sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go and find another way.“

Share

Why You Should Always Focus On Your Introduction

In trainings, meetings, presentations, speeches and encounters it is always very important to get the introduction right. There are three reasons for that:

  • people generally remember the beginning the most (together with the end);
  • people will judge whether it is worth listening to you within the first 1 to 2 minutes
  • and because depending on the interest you raise, you will recruit more or less brain capability in our interlocutor.

introduction-speech“If you are trying to get information across to someone, your ability to create a compelling introduction may be the most important single factor in the later success of your mission. Why this emphasis on the initial moments? Because the memory of an event is stored in the same places that were initially recruited to perceive the learning event. The more brain structures recruited— the more door handles created— at the moment the learning, the easier it is to gain access to the information” – John Medina in ‘Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School‘.

If you don’t have time to rehearse and optimize your entire presentation, at least do it for the first 1 to 2 minutes of your performance. Just these few seconds can make a dramatic difference in your overall impact!

Share

How to Know If You Have Communicated Enough Your Message

“Until your people are “mocking” you, you’ve not repeated your message enough” states Verne Harnish in the book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits.

repeat-messageWhen it comes to implementing change, communication of a consistent message throughout the organization is very important. What I observe is that too often, executives believe they have over-communicated when in fact, the message has not been perceived or received with sufficient clarity. Sometimes they even have not really communicated the message beyond their direct reports!

I like this criteria for knowing whether you have communicated sufficiently on your message: wait until someone mocks you about it, or just mentions amicably that you’ve said the same a sufficient number of times. Then you’ll know that the message has been received and only then can you move on to the next.

Share

How to Deal With Rumors

Why are we so often spreading rumors when not outright gossiping? “Sociologists explain rumors as collective sense-making. In each case, there is a gap in the authoritative explanation for some period of time, and rumors filled in that gap” – says Dan Zarrella in ‘Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas‘.

rumors spreadingHence creating and spreading rumors would be a mechanism for us to make sense of events or situations for which we would not have a satisfactory explanation. Sometimes this exercise degenerates into conspiracy theories, however it generally remains at a more innocuous level.

Rumors disappear instantly when a clear and unambiguous explanation is given, which is the right way to kill them.

With the Fourth Revolution our capability to spread rumors has increased dramatically on the social networks, which is sometimes destructive. Giving as soon as possible an authoritative explanation is the best way to destroy them.

Share

Why You Should Be Scared Sometimes – It Shows You Are Thinking Big Enough

“If you’re not a little afraid, and the other vendor in the room is telling you you shouldn’t be, then either ‘one of us is in the wrong room’ or you’re not thinking big enough” – says Matt Ridings in this post, written in the context of a small company’s sales efforts. Growth will necessarily happen at the expense of fear.

dreams_scare_not big enoughMatt Ridings continues – “Fear is a good thing, it’s almost universally true that ‘the larger the opportunity the larger the challenge’”. That says it all. If you’re not a little bit afraid, then maybe you are not going after the right size of opportunities.

Not long ago I grasped a great opportunity to grow significantly my company. It came with some risk associated. The risk was quite high, just not so high as to bankrupt the company after some risk engineering. I decided to go for it. Time will tell whether the opportunity will materialize.

Funny, I was about to write ‘time will tell if it was the right decision’ but that is absolutely wrong. Whether the opportunity materializes will be the result of my effort (a little bit) and of luck and other external factors I can’t control (a lot). So, the decision was the right one. Whether the opportunity materializes is something else.

It’s tough to ‘think big’ and when I re-read my post on thinking big posted in June 2012 a few months after I started my company, I see how much a way remains for me to be comfortable with the fear it entails. It is getting better though – and growth ambitions for myself and my company combine into an exciting mix!

Share

How to Calm Down To Find the Right Response to Your Issue

When you are panicked and stressed there is no way you can find the right way to resolve your problem. If you are calm right now, it might look a straightforward common-sense comment, but how often have you tried to find a way to resolve an issue while remaining panicky excited?

stressed executive
Stressed? Right now, calm down before reacting the wrong way!

That will only result in one phenomenon: you will REACT instead of RESPOND. There is a definite nuance between the two. Reaction is like a knee-jerk; it is unconscious and aims for selfish short-term protection. Response on the other hand is thoughtful, and can also take into into account wider interests as well as a long term view.

So the issue is how to calm down before doing something that you might regret later, in addition to probably be ineffective or even counter-productive. Time-off is the only solution, and then depending on the time available, different techniques can apply. When I have time I like to go walking for a while, or even exercising more actively. Ideally I like to spend a night on a difficult situation. When I don’t have time, I apply mindful breathing which in a few deep breaths do effectively lower my stress and allows me to respond instead of reacting.

These are quite easy; what is difficult is to recognize that you need some time off to cool down when you are in the midst of the difficult and stressful situation, so that you regain clarity of thought. It is worth taking the habit of regularly touching-base with yourself to consciously assess whether you are in that situation.

In any case, stop reacting in panic and stressed mode! Calm down and respond instead!

Share

Why Clarity Comes From Doing, Not Thinking

“Clarity comes from engagement, not thought”. I am not quite sure whom to attribute that quote but it has become very much used on the internet (Marie Forleo seems to be a possible contender).

clarity_engagementAnyway, that is just a way to re-iterate that instead of over-thinking and over-intellectualizing it is quite more effective to go into action and find clarity there, in the midst of action and doing. That might require to survive to many iterations, to overcome dead-ends, and to survive to fundamental re-inventions of oneself. It’ll be tough but at least you’ll make significant progress towards clarity.

There is no better effective recipe than diving into action to gain clarity.

And that is very much applicable to one’s personal purpose. You won’t find it reading books and theorizing while surfing on the internet. You’ll discovering through creating stuff, interacting with people.

It is also applicable to entrepreneurs when it comes to the business model of their ventures. It is only through trial and error that they will find what the market actually wants.

Stop over-thinking right now! Go and DO something!

Hat tip to Ishita Gupta for raising my awareness of the quote and her great explanation of the concept in one of her regular emails.

Share

The Exponential Deception, or Why We Always Underestimate Incremental Change

I am always impressed how much we tend to underestimate the power of incremental change, i.e. the power of regular, small changes that do aggregate finally in an exponential improvement.

Micro-SD cards capacity transformation
Micro-SD card capacity multiplied by 1,000 in 10 years… that’s only an improvement by a factor of 2 every year!

There are many such examples in the world around us, such as the Moore law for computer processors, or similar laws for the evolution of the memory capability of hard disks or solid-state memory. The capacity of these products do not evolve suddenly through the sudden invention of new technologies, they evolve slowly by successive small improvements, resulting finally in exponential change in capability over time. As shown in the illustration, the transformation of micro-SD cards storage capacity (a factor of 1,000 in 10 years) only means that this capacity has doubled every year. That looks much more feasible!

It is difficult for us psychologically to apprehend what an exponential change means. Its power lies in progressively compounding successive changes.

What does it mean for us personally, or for the organization we try to change? You can reach the goal of a much greater transformation, on the long term, by accruing successive, small changes on a very regular basis. On a personal basis, by small daily or weekly improvement goals. At the organizational level, by setting weekly or monthly improvement goals. These goals do not need to be substantially challenging nor appear to be unfeasible – it is the accumulation of these small changes that will create transformation. And suddenly, with an achievable daily, weekly or monthly goal, change looks much less sinister.

So, when do you start compounding small, incremental changes?

Share

Why We Underestimate the Change Brought by The Fourth Revolution

It all fits into an interesting quote by Bill Gates: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten“.

Gates quote on predictionThat quote takes a particular taste coming from a person that is deemed to have missed, when it comes to Microsoft’s strategy, many of the key changes brought by technology in the last decade.

Our forecasting ability is exceedingly limited. Change takes it time to transform the world, but it will roll on inevitably. Today, I believe we totally underestimate the changes in our daily life, our institutions, our organizations, that are being brought by the Fourth Revolution. These changes will be tremendous. As Gates says, let us not being lulled into inaction, but let us anticipate what is coming. It is only at this condition that we will benefit from it.

Change starts now. When do you start?

Share

Why the Ultimate Weapon for Cutting Losses is Changing the Manager

Following our series of posts on the issue of the psychological avoidance of cutting losses when prospects are bleak, let us once again quote Daniel Kahneman in the bestseller “Thinking, Fast and Slow“: “[because of the psychological effect leading to desperate gambles in the face of a high probability failure], the escalation of commitment to failing endeavors is a mistake from the perspective of the firm but not necessarily from the perspective of the executive who “owns” a floundering project“. As a result, “Boards of directors are well aware of these conflicts and often replace a CEO who is encumbered by prior decisions and reluctant to cut losses.” That statement can naturally be extended to any situation down in the organization.

Change_CEOThe ultimate response to the situation of the manager or the executive that continues a failing project and cannot exit this situation of desperate gambling is thus, from the organization point of view, the replacement of the manager in charge. Unencumbered by the issue of sunk costs and sunk emotional commitment, the new manager can cut losses (which, at the same time, allows him or her to highlight that the previous manager what incompetent – while that might just have been bad luck).

However there are obviously many drawbacks to that ultimate decision; in particular, the temporary lack of effectiveness which will be created in that part of the organization until the new manager is up to speed with the particulars of the company and the business. Often, it is preferable not to use that ultimate weapon but rather opt for softer solutions such as introducing as deputy someone that will allow a new course to be taken. This last solution also allows continuity and minimizes disruption.

When it comes to cutting losses on an endeavor and if the situation has already worsened significantly, changing the manager in charge can be the only solution to save what can still be saved. The emotional attachment to sunk actions is too strong to be overcome by the people in place, even if they show outstanding capabilities.

Share