In a Harvard Business Review blog post, Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan introduce us to the concept of a fast zebra: someone who, “can quickly absorb information, adapt to new challenges, and get people aligned in the right direction… They are the people who can skirt around or blast through the kind of gridlock found […]
Fast Zebras Drive Change Read More »
Mother Teresa told a story of a man in Melbourne she visited who had been, it seemed, forgotten by the world and himself. She asked to clean his room for him because she saw it was in a terrible state. He reluctantly agreed. When she cleaned she found an old, beautiful, unlit lamp covered in
Let Your Little Light Shine Read More »
As the 50th anniversary of the moon landing nears, my thoughts have been drifting past the moon, to Mars. In 1962, when President Kennedy challenged the United States to go to the moon he said, We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon…We choose to go to the Moon in
Take Your Shot at Mars Read More »
Best-in-class sounds like a position to aspire to. It isn’t. To more accurately describe best-in-class, we could call it either forever-chasing-the-leaders or struggling-to-do-the-same-thing-the-other-laggards-are-struggling-to-do. When you’re the one defining best-in-class, then you’ll have competitive advantage. There’s no competitive advantage in copying. Take a lesson from the leaders: if you want to be the best, be yourself. Let the
There’s No Competitive Advantage in Copying Read More »
Conventionally powered change runs on the force of driving people. It takes years, has a high failure rate (sources vary in the actual %, but individual experience can attest that it fails more often than we’d like) and leaves you depleted of funds, morale, and good will. Unconventional change runs
Change: What makes it run? What keeps it running? Read More »
Middle Managers. That’s the most often given answer to the question, “Who most resists change in your organization?” It would be easy to go along with the crowd and turn middle managers into the villains of our change story, but something doesn’t seem right. It seems too easy to scapegoat them, individually and collectively. Instead,
Middle Managers: Life in the Diamond Zone Read More »
Responsibility is a unique concept… You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you… If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the
Sadly, I’ve watched many centralized change teams (e.g., Lean Offices, Agile Groups, Morale Committees) die organizational deaths. Much of the suffering prior to their demises has been at their own hands, though I doubt they would ever see it that way. Hence, I offer my perspective as another version of the story that may prompt
How a Change Team Dies & How to Save Them Read More »
Are you struggling with how to enact empowerment in a project? Want a framework to help you have an effective conversation about how to integrate empowerment with development and teamwork? Try this new framework I’ve put together, merging my work and David Marquet’s Ladder of Leadership. The Authorization Tiers debuted publicly at the New Trends
Authorization Tiers Read More »
Want a change in 2017? Seeking a way to create it? Why not try the Change Agent Essentials, explained vividly in Everyone is a Change Agent? Change takes time. Why not start today?
2017 – The Year of Change? Read More »
