Today is a milestone day for what I believe is one of the greatest examples of leadership in history. Today, the One Laptop Per Child Project begins mass production in China.The goal of the project is to provide low cost laptop computers (under $200) to children in developing countries. If you haven’t heard of this …
Read more “Leading our future – The One Laptop per Child Project”
I wish I could take credit for that statement. It captures a basic premise upon which leadership is based. Yet, many of the leaders with whom I’ve come in contact don’t seem to get it.The statement is attributed to Marion E. Wade, the founder of Service Master. Service Master was the largest contract services firm …
I recently received a letter from a State Representative. The letter was a response to a note that I sent regarding my concerns about health care and small businesses. I sent the note to five public officials. Only two responded (which is a leadership topic in and of itself.)This particular note was the better of …
Read more “Leadership is more than just knowing what won’t work”
OK, maybe that was extreme. If used properly, communication plans can be very effective. If your actions are driven by people’s questions, concerns, hopes, and needs, at any given time, they can work. But, if tasks are triggered by dates on a calendar, you are bound to fail. The key is focusing on the people …
Read more “Leading change – Communication plans are the enemy of change efforts”
Big change initiatives require a lot of time, money, and effort. Often one or more start to run out as the project proceeds. When this happens leaders must make a choice. Since visible results are often what gets measured (date of the implementation, functionality of the system), they usually win out. The losers wind up …
Read more “Leading change – Don’t ask for more than you’ll give”
One of the common mistakes that I’ve seen leaders make is to position change management within the context of the execution of a project. That is, they place the change management tasks along side requirements definition, building, and deployment. Often the people responsible for design and build are the same people who are responsible for …
Read more “Leading change – Execution is about deliverables, Change management is about people”
Most things in nature follow a path of least resistance. Nature conserves energy and the least energy is required when not battling inertia, friction, obstruction, or gravity. People aren’t much different. In organizations, the inertia, friction, and gravity comes from supervisors, organization policies investment decisions, or the culture/rewards that are set up in the organization. …
One of the most important questions on everyone’s mind in a change is “when is it going to happen?”. Everyone needs his or her time to adjust, cope, freak out, or otherwise respond to the change. Even if your organization is providing a lot of formal support, people need to pace themselves and process the …
No, it’s not a communication plan! It’s not even communication. The most important element of managing change is people. More specifically, it’s focusing on the success of the people going through the change rather than on the success of the change itself.Now, this probably sounds obvious. Of course it’s about the people. However, I constantly …
The term “change management” has come to mean a lot of things to different people. Often it is associated with communicating the change and training people on how the new tools or processes they’ll be using. While that is part of managing change, I believe there is more. Change management is not about what is …