Archives
Spaghetti Sauce and Organizational Change
In this presentation Malcolm Gladwell introduces us to a man named Howard Moskowitz. In the seventies, Pepsi wanted Moskowitz to figure out the perfect amount of sweetener for a can of Diet Pepsi. Moskowitz looked for the concentration that people liked the most. But the data were a mess—there wasn’t a pattern—and one day, sitting […]
Level 1: Attention please!
Why so-called Smiley-sheets are important Donald Kirkpatrick first published his ideas on training evaluation in 1959. His four-level model is now considered an industry standard across the HR and training communities. It was later redefined and updated in his 1998 book ‘Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels’. According to Kirkpatrick, each of these evaluation levels […]
Teamwork is Not a Management Invention
Have you ever tried to find a definition of teamwork in management literature? I have; and I was overwhelmed, confused, over buzzed and totally blown away with all that expensive talk. However, none of it made sense. Until a few years ago, teacher Saskia, whom I grew up with, told me about Complex Instruction (here […]
How do you learn?
Some time ago I was asked that question on the Linkedin forum and this is what I answered. 1. Learning Tension between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’. I need a necessity – something that is waiting, burning, urgent, important and that is not yet a reality. 2. Time-to-Task I learn better when the purpose […]
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 […]
Dump your Blackberry and get a life!
Nowadays it’s hard to look past the “buzzy” people who are eagerly typing with both thumbs on their Blackberry device. In a restaurant, at the airport, in the car, at the dinner table or even on a day out with their family. These people are at work: controlling their workload, arranging their schedules and meeting […]
No Passion, No excellence
A few weeks ago a I had the privilege of being invited by some friends (who are passionate about Italian wines) for a short trip to Piedmont. As you can imagine this was not the ordinary cultural sightseeing trip to Italy but an exciting journey into Italian winemaking and gastronomy. No need to mention that […]
Leading Change = Innovation
Below you will find a presentation by Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki is well known in the world of marketing and it’s about time that the dry and – at times – overly academic world of organizational change gets introduced to his ideas. In this particular presentation Guy Kawasaki talks at the 2007 Event Marketer Conference about […]
An Alternative Approach to Resistance
The picture below shows two brilliant management consultants unwinding at the counter of a downtown bar. Note the subtle difference between the white text balloons and the grey ones. White = categorized, judged, stuck, isolated, done. Grey = puzzled, eager to find out, preparing for interaction. The point of this post is to offer you […]
Open Letter To My Colleagues (Incl. Myself)
In my career as a management consultant I have met all kinds of colleagues that I envy and admire for their charisma, their wit, their smartness or their marvelous rhetoric. Nevertheless I recently found out that all the things that make us great consultants, smart and intelligent, fast and proactive, are holding us back from […]
