Strategic renewal is not an easy process to begin, fund, or lead, because it entails making changes before disruption occurs. The problem for many businesses, stretched as they are by myriad pressures and mounting costs, is they don’t want to go ‘looking for trouble’. Yet recent research suggests that is exactly what they need to […]
Read More… from Rapid Response Teams: Strategic Renewal for Organizations
Once understood as something exceptional, change is increasingly seen as part of everyday working life. (The notion of the organization, somewhat paradoxically, now incorporates both change and stability.) Change management has become a dominant modus operandi for many companies. Despite this, there’s little evidence that the management of change is getting better or that organizations […]
Read More… from Back to the Future: Managing Change with Retrospection
‘Charismatic leadership’ has received much attention from researchers over the past few decades, lending support to theories that it is capable of fostering higher levels of employee and team performance in organizations. The term was first used in the 1940s by German sociologist Max Weber, who envisioned ‘charismatic leaders’ as leaders able to inspire passionate […]
Read More… from Leaders’ Charisma, Team Performance and Organizational Change
Cynicism to change (CTC) is often studied at the individual level — how employees react to change. Indeed, employee CTC will impact whether or not change can be successfully implemented in any organization. However, according to Katherine A. DeCelles of University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Paul E. Tesluk of the University of Buffalo […]
Read More… from Resistance to Change: Overcoming Multilevel Cynicism
Buying integrated services is now the dominant ‘modus operandi’ for clients in IT outsourcing arrangements. But relatively little is known about how integrated services are co-ordinated and implemented by providers. Combining multiple service components into a single working portfolio can be complex — and often amounts to a major change programme that involves the in-sourcing […]
Read More… from Integrated IT Outsourcing: Total Package or Total Chaos?
While the commonly accepted wisdom is that new CEOs from the outside will be in a better position to bring change to an organization, the record indicates otherwise. They often fail. Ayse Karaevli of the WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, and Edward Zajac of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management challenge the conventional wisdom and […]
Read More… from Outsider CEOs and Strategic Change
In the quest to achieve global efficiency, often companies find themselves faced with a dilemma: how can they manage the various processes needed to run a global organization, yet keep a locally-flexible system at the same time? Unable to reach this equilibrium, many find themselves stuck in a rigid system and not as customer-orientated as […]
Read More… from Balancing Local and Global Efficiency with Anchored Agility
Group coaching is known to help break down barriers to communication, build trust and solve specific and practical problems in organizations. An interpersonal learning process, it can create the impetus for change. Its effects can be explained by psychology and psychodynamics. Good coaches use the ‘clinical paradigm’ as a conceptual framework for group sessions. They recognise […]
Read More… from Group Coaching: The ‘X-Factor’ Explained
Troubled manufacturing company the KSV is at crisis point. Its Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program has failed to deliver the expected benefits, and two of its biggest customers, Avobus and Ecotech, are threatening to defect. Senior members of staff are divided, and, after a particularly difficult meeting, managing director James Grader, brought in to […]
Read More… from Calling in the Consultants: Risks and Rewards
The KSV plastics company is in trouble. A myopic cost control program has created supply chain and production problems and made it difficult to deliver orders on time and to acceptable standards. One of its best customers, Avobus, looks likely to ‘walk’. Managers are working themselves into the ground to keep the business afloat – […]
Read More… from The Surprising Reality of the Leadership of Change