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Dying Before Going Into Battle
This is the title of the fourth chapter of the 1996 book ‘The Last Word on Power’ by Tracy Goss. In this chapter, Goss draws our attention to the Japanese Samurai warriors who, in reminding themselves of the inevitability of loss, used the phrase “Die before going into battle.” This practice allowed a warrior to […]
The Time Factor
As I am writing this we are about to shake up a traditional organization by means of an SAP implementation. Most of the times this is regarded as a pure software implementation: design the system, configure the system, test the system and roll it out. That is how most software engineers look at it and […]
Useful Insights from Employee Burnout
Research suggests that the level of autonomy or job-control determines the level of stress and burnout to a larger extent than job-demand or complexity. For managers there is a lesson in there: Respect.
More Evidence on the Good Nature of Resistance
This week I came across an article by Alain Vas, professor at the Louvain School of Management in La Libre Entreprise (i.e. the business section of a Belgian newspaper published in French). Professor Vas – like most professors – starts off by analyzing the origins of the word ‘resistance’. Apparently the original Latin word ‘resistere’ signifies ‘to stop’ […]
Always Remember Rule Number 6!
The following story is quoted from Ben and Rosamund Zander’s book ‘The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life’
Some Mails are Better Never Sent
I tend to believe that the best consulting work is done with the heart breaking or overflowing. Sometimes people tell me not to get so emotionally involved and to adopt a rational outsider perspective.
Change Cycle Illusions
The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is NOT a Straight Line The dotted line in the drawing below shows the expectation that people might have with regard to a transition from a current state to a future one. The fact that we perceive this transition in this way is caused by the fact that we […]
Managing Moments of Truth
Another Must-Know Insight from Marketing Time and again I have underscored that organizational change management experts can learn heaps from the marketing department next door. If only we are willing enough to discover the parallels between a marketer and his customer segments one the one hand and an organizational change program manager and his stakeholders […]
Four Basic Emotions
Mad – Sad – Glad – ScaredYou need to know that there are four basic emotions at hand; i.e, four basic fuels that contain the energy we need in order to move from one state toanother. Fear, anger, sadness, and happiness are the four basic emotions that can be experienced by every person in any […]
Reframing the Question
A recent survey conducted by the McKinsey Quarterly (2006) among 1536 executives of publicly and privately held businesses across a full range of industries reveals the importance of emotions in the success of an organizational change. The respondents who experienced a performance transformation over the past 5 years were asked to rate it on […]
