Regularly I recharge my change driving batteries by sampling the delightful links my friends send me. As I prepared for the long holiday weekend–Happy 4th of July by the way!–I thought, “Why not offer up some link fuel for my Engine for Change friends?” Enjoy! Charles Green reveals the silly secrets of strategy in You …
It doesn’t matter if you’re right. It doesn’t matter if the change you’re proposing is the exact thing your organization needs to do to thrive or even survive. If you can’t get anyone to listen to you or anyone to implement the change, no one will ever know you were right. Driving change is about …
Today I’m excited to post my review of Andrea Shapiro’s second edition of Creating Contagious Commitment. In 2005 I started my journey through organizational change, with the first edition of Andrea Shapiro’s Creating Contagious Commitment: Applying the Tipping Point to Organizational Change as my implementer’s guide to successful change. Since 2005 I’ve learned a lot of …
Whether you read the Air Force Academy or Naval Academy versions of the speech, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is asking cadets and midshipmen to drive change. In his remarks, Secretary Gates encouraged our future military leaders to: Learn from the experiences and the setbacks of the past; Be open to ideas and inspiration from …
When you’re driving change, you may be drawn into conversations about what progress you are making. Whenever I’m discussing (or thinking about) progress I try to keep this C.S. Lewis quote swirling in my head: But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong …
When you’re driving change, you’ll want to remember this quote: Improvement is doubly difficult when individual habit is reinforced by group inertia. It comes from the Navy Correspondence Manual and it’s referring to writing official letters, memos and recommendations. But, to me it means so much more. Say you’re the first person in your work …
Tomorrow Professor John Kotter visits my workplace, to see how successful we’ve become at using his model to create real, lasting change. (link to the press release) Today I found Rogue Polymath’s post about what reading Leading Change did for him, and his post prompted me to write “My Leading Change Story.” I can’t remember …
C.S. Lewis said, Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” When you’re driving people, your best-intended coercion is still coercion. Are you being a tyrant about your change? Why not try changing your focus to enabling the change (instead of enforcing it) and see …
Part of driving change is overcoming your fear of failing and especially overcoming your fear of succeeding. What if the change you’re driving actually happens? What if pushing your limits creates an exciting opportunity to achieve even more success? What would you do? Theodore Roosevelt said, There were all kinds of things I was afraid …
This week’s quote comes from the speech, The Forgotten Man, given by William Graham Sumner in 1883. The Forgotten Man…delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school…but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and …
