Tag Archives: change

Posted on

How to Thrive in a World of Monumental Change

We are all aware that the world around us is changing very quickly. In fact, the rate of change is continually accelerating. As a result, individuals, organizations, businesses and even entire cultures are struggling to keep up.

Furthermore, as business leaders, we can no longer assume that the market space we occupy today will be the same market space that we occupy in six months. Products and services that we offer and the technology that we use today will be obsolete tomorrow!

Renowned authors, Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s book entitled “Revolutionary Wealth” provides innovative ideas on how changes in society, government, culture and business are transforming our lives in this century. Especially relevant, the Tofflers have compared the rates of change of major institutions in North America to cars speeding along on a highway. They have rated nine institutions with a “change” rate of speed between 0 and 100 miles per hour as follows:

Posted on

How To Build A Powerful Business Strategy

12 Steps to Business Transformation – Step 4

Over the last few posts, I introduced my Ebook 12 Steps to Business Transformation and I defined Vision, Mission and Values, which are the first 3 steps of the 12 transformational steps. This week we are going to talk about Business Strategy.

Defining the Business Strategy for your business is step 4 in my new Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation.”

Business Strategy considers all the internal and external market forces, your business strengths and weaknesses, your vision, mission and values, the service and/or product your business sells and the marketplace that you are selling into. The Business Strategy pulls all these divergent thoughts, ideas, conditions, and concepts together and defines a high level plan to engage successfully in the marketplace.

Without a clearly defined business strategy, your business is destined for decline and failure. This does not mean you need a 10,000-page business strategy document that takes years to write and now just collects dust on a shelf in your office.

What is needed is a simple, concise, focused and nimble plan that you constantly refer to, communicate from and measure progress against.

Posted on

What Boats Should You Be Burning?

History tells us that when Alexander the Great invaded Persia, he burned his ships upon landing on the shores of Persia and then told his men if they wanted to go home they would have to go home in Persian ships. This provided significant motivation to the Greek soldiers and they fought hard and conquered the Persians even though they were far outnumbered. This same strategy was repeated on the shores of Mexico in 1519 by Hernan Cortes with his small army of 600 Spaniards. Turns out Cortes also won this war and conquered Mexico. It is amazing what motivated people can do!

Now, I do not recommend burning boats or vehicles or other modes of transportation in today’s world. However, metaphorically speaking, you need to ask yourself what boats have carried your business to some distant shores and now need to be burned so there is no way back? In other words, what mission critical initiatives were rolled out in your organization that did not get 100% buy-in from your staff because you allowed old behaviors or tools or processes to continue?

Posted on

What I Learned This Year And Why Its Important

This past year has been a very busy year for me. I have been “on the road” for about 3 weeks out of every month, traveling all over the US and Canada, twice to Europe, twice to India and down to Mexico City. My main role on these business trips is to review projects and provide insights, connections, suggestions and guidance wherever possible for the managers that are running these projects. The project managers are as diverse as the projects themselves which vary widely from around $20 million to upwards of $350 million. This has made for a challenging year!

Besides striving to provide value on these projects, I also try to learn as much as possible wherever I go. One of the interesting observations I have made is that regardless of culture, business environment, language or time zone, everyone wants to be successful. However, only those that are willing to take responsibility for their success actually achieve it. What I mean by this is that the people that take responsibility for their success do not let anything stand in their way to achieving success. For example;

Posted on

A Change Management Model That All Leaders Must Understand

A few weeks ago I wrote about dealing with organizational change in my post “The Secret Of Organizational Change Management.” This post was based on a great article in Strategy + Business magazine which outlined 10 guiding principles for change.

That post was focused on how leaders should roll out change inside their organizations but it made me think about the flip side of this. How do the employees see change from their point of view? A few years ago I attended a leadership development class that provided a model of how people react when confronted with change. This model is from Spencer, Shenk and Capers . According to the model, everyone reacts to change by moving through the following six stages;

Stage 1: Loss – Employees are shocked by the change and experience fear and trepidation. They are cautious and can be paralyzed and unproductive for a period of time. It is analogous to a period of grieving.