Heraclitus ^[1] (535 BCE) was probably the father of change management.

Two quotes:

‘There is nothing permanent except change’.
‘No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man’.

When you put both together you realise that the traditional ‘management of change’ approaches, methods and philosophies, full of many good intentions, but also full of many flaws, have in common one flaw, the mother of all: the almost hidden, unspoken assumption that management of change starts from a static, zero base, immobile (bad), or at least a plateau situation. Then, after a period of assessment, also assumed as a static, zero base, and immobile situation, ‘the change method’ kicks in and it all starts moving.

How foolish, Heraclitus tells us from the Hellenistic apartments of the heavens. It’s a river, stupid! It can’t stop! By the time you have done all cultural assessments, all stakeholder management, all investigations about readiness, all redesigning of templates and workshopsterone kicks in, the river is not that river, and, when you step in, you get wet with different water.

Change in the organization does not need to be created, it is already there. It can’t be ‘managed’ from a stop-world position. You think that you have a battalion of Big Consulting Group consultants invading the corridors, and 250 PowerPoints later, you will know what is going on. The river! The river! Heraclitus shouts.

Change can be steered, directed, disrupted, distorted, but not managed from a static form, as in a train in the station that, at a given time, the doors shut and leaves in a predefined direction.

The ‘methodological’ implications are clear. Any method, approach, formula, particularly the heavy sequential ones with lots of Gantt charts, and the ones with lots of pre-conditions (readiness, total leadership alignment) which claim will ‘manage change’ (even worse ‘will deliver change’) is bound to fail. The river of the first conversation did not stop; the river of the cultural assessment is different; the river of the leadership readiness is different, and the original templates are now very wet.

‘Change’ does not cope well with ‘methods’. It needs a platform that takes into account all the water under the bridge, that is not sequential, that accounts also for the emergent and continuous re-calibration. The modern word for ‘corporate change’ is ‘corporate rafting’ and the platforms are like big, big inflatable kayaks. You won’t be surprised if I say that Viral Change ^[2] is that big kayak.

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For an example of the power of Viral Change read about our work with GSK Vaccines. ^[3] (article written by: Hilton Barbour).

Or watch our Change Journey video ^[4] and hear from our clients how Viral Change effectively drove change through their organizations.

 

 

Third instalment in the uncovering of truths via a reverse engineering of the failure of change and transformation programmes.

Finding: it all started skilfully creating antibodies all round. The company immune system reacted.  It was in fact masochistic.

Not unusual. Starting a culture programme in an organization that has very bad memories of culture programmes seems like a bad idea. Yet, people do these things.

Framing ‘the programme’ as another corporate initiative competing for airtime with the other 23 running in parallel, is a bad idea. Yet, people do these things.

Announcing to the world a massive ‘change of culture’ is a good recipe for people to run to the bunkers fast. All that would be missing is air raid sirens. [In fact, we get air-raid sirens in the form of ‘and we’ve got (name of Big Consulting) here’]

I personally try to avoid labels, not always successfully. The best change programme is the one when change happens and it’s not seen as a programme. That is the aim. Not always achievable, but no less of a noble aim.

One of the principles that we in Viral Change^TM  consider more precious is what we call ‘Designed Informality’. The change/culture transformation programme is deployed in a rather invisible way (note I don’t mean secret), so it feels informal, de-corporatised, and it’s in fact informal in implementation (e.g peer-to-peer engagement), with the exception of punctuated activities, but it is well designed in the background by a very structured project team. Only the project team/engine room (we call it in many ways) sees 100% of the ‘project mechanics’. The rest of the world see peers working with peers, stories of success flowing around  and leaders talking a lot about … ‘how can I help you?’

Reminder: ‘The system will prevent itself from solving the problems created by ^[5] itself’. Study the geography of change.

Two more to come.

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Managing the Covid-19 pandemic using Viral Change™ principles. 12 rules you can apply.

 

Read my recent paper which addresses the non-medical management of the pandemic through the lenses of large scale behavioural and cultural change principles, as practiced by the Viral Change™ Mobilizing Platform for the last 20 years, in the area of organizational change.

 

12 Rules For A Behavioural Counter-Epidemic To Deal With Covid-19   ^[6]

 

A viral epidemic for which there is no immediate cure, only ways of managing it, can only be controlled by a counter behavioural epidemic.

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Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project ^[7], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral Change^TM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.

Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements ^[8] and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project ^[9].

His latest book, The Flipping point – Deprogramming Management ^[10], is available at all major online bookstores.

 

This five part mini-series (!) is not glamorous. It tries to uncover some inconvenient truths via a reverse engineering of failure . The failure of change and transformation programmes. A poor track, collective management record of about three quarters failure.

Now, visualise for a second: 75% of the time your IT system is down; 75% of the time, your recruitment process fails to appoint the right people; 75% of your forecast is wrong. Get the picture? Yes, heads will roll. But in this mythical area of multi-million pound Big Consulting change, 75% seem to be an acceptable rate. They are not dismissed, they get an extension of the contract.

Let me unpack five reasons usually given, unpack five arguments, uncover one or two fallacies.

(1) For the prosecution: stakeholders were not properly involved, so no wonder it failed.

My experience is it’s the opposite. ‘Everybody and their uncle’, as the idiom goes, seems to have been involved: users, super-users, focus groups, project teams, steering committees, endless cascaded workshops and off-sites looking for a ‘democratic’ answer. As far as I am concerned, we involve too many people, not too few.

Debates and deliberations about what is to be deliberated in the first place, the format of the deliberation, who should be involved in deliberating, the deliverables of the deliberation and the naïve belief that deliberating at scale means change at scale, dominate corporations air time.

There is a pseudo-democratic, uncritical, naïve, default, very entrenched management practice position that proclaims that over-inclusiveness is good. A cascade of workshops, myriad of focus groups, roadshows and big binders, will be the mechanism to engage people. And if we do that, then we will be successful. Nobody possessing this naïve view of organizational life should occupy a leading position in HR/OD/L&D.

Very often, those who challenge this are accused of being authoritarian, non-inclusive promoters of culture dictatorship. It’s a sign of the typical bipolar illness that we suffer from in corporate life.

Pseudo-democratic crowdsourcing of everything is an alibi for bad leaders who relinquish their responsibility. Not involving some key people in some key initiatives, particularly those who could block them, is leadership arrogance. Not understanding the key to change, lies with a small number of highly influential individuals, is not understanding organizational life. Yet, organizations are not very good at getting the dose, the time, the sync and the geography of change right.

Massive involvement of ‘everybody and their uncle’ also has unintended liabilities:

1. It delays unnecessarily, the timely launch of decisive action, sometimes for months, if not years
2. It raises high expectations in the crowd. ‘Be careful what you are asking for, you might get it’. Those who are delighted to be asked are often the same who expect their input absorbed and prominent in black and white. If not, the disappointment is massive and next time you ask, they won’t be there.

Who needs to know?, who needs to be involved?, when do we stop asking?, who will block this?, who really needs to be behind this?, These are magic questions.

I repeat, it’s not a lack of involvement that kills projects, it’s too much of it.

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Watch our webinar on The Myths of Change ^[11]. Traditional management and a great deal of academic thinking is responsible for the colossal failure of ‘change programmes’.

 

The first in our series of webinars debunks uncontested assumptions in this area and uncovers the alternatives, whilst considering why this debunking of myths is even more relevant today in the current exceptional Covid-19 environment.

To change to ‘the new normal’ we must think and act differently in the management of our organizations, particularly in the areas of change and transformation. We must abandon change as something imposed in favour of people becoming true agents. Organizations that have mastered this have been in ‘the new normal’ for a while!

 

What attendees said:

‘Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this fantastic webinar. Both the depth of the discussion between Leandro and Carlos and the very intensive exchange in the chat inspired me.’

 

It was a great pleasure to participate in today’s webinar…. If you would have been sitting next to me, you would have seen a lot of ‘head nodding’ and heard a couple of loud ‘yes’es’ from the bottom of my heart. 

 

WATCH NOW ^[11]

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dr Leandro Herrero is the CEO and Chief Organization Architect of The Chalfont Project ^[7], an international firm of organizational architects. He is the pioneer of Viral Change^TM, a people Mobilizing Platform, a methodology that delivers large scale behavioural and cultural change in organizations, which creates lasting capacity for changeability.

Dr Herrero is also an Executive Fellow at the Centre for the Future of Organization, Drucker School of Management. An international speaker, Dr Herrero is available for virtual speaking engagements ^[8] and can be reached at: The Chalfont Project ^[9].

His latest book, The Flipping point – Deprogramming Management ^[10], is available at all major online bookstores.

 

I have seen the same slide yet again. It keeps following me on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. OK, not on Facebook, I have deleted my account. It says:  Old organization, new organization. Old power to new power. Power goes from hierarchical to distributed. Communication from silos to networks. Top down to bottom up. Top down to distributed. Command and control to empowerment. And another few more.

Have you seen that slide? If not, your Sabbatical sounds wonderful.

The beauty of this all-purpose-slide is that it will accept lots of labels: agile, future of work, change, transformation, and of course, digitalization. It is like a renewable energy product, a perfect idea recycling, multi-use, multi-purpose, prêt-à-porter  management.

This obligatory stop on ‘the new world that is coming to us ’ serves well as a tool for conversations . And this is good. The slight problem is that 90% of the talkers are proficient at talking but not many have a clue as to how on earth all that is going to be implemented. Small detail.

The talkers are fantastic at talking to each other as a global tribe. It’s mutually self-reinforcing. There will be workshops. There will be post-its (management development is the result of a conspiracy by 3M), there will be people on the floor arranging cards (why on the floor? It looks more tribal but it’s terrible for your back), wallpaper with arrows (change) and hexagons (design thinking). And all will be good. Biblical. They will look at everything they have made, and they will be very pleased.

There are however two problems

1. Nobody with real power to change in the organization listens or cares about the arrows, hexagons and the old power/new power stuff.
2. The Grand Designers design but have not a good idea of how this is going to be implemented in, say, a traditional medium to large organization. Will just go one day to leaders and say, ‘you people, stop being top-down, don’t you see this is démodé, embrace bottom-up!’ Change! You need to change! And be a good role model. People are looking at you! (No, they aren’t)

The ‘what’ (top down not good, bottom up good…) is well known by now. So well known that can be easily trivialised. The how is the trick. How to go from ‘that slide’ to changing 15000 people in the organization. How to actually change behaviours. You won’t find that in many powerpoint stacks from Big Consulting

When The Talkers venture into the how, they act as shoppers, not cooks. So they say, OK, we need more trust, a lot of accountability, and empowerment, and a lot, a lot, a lot of customer-centrism ( as if the customer cared about your post-its and Grand Designs) and, of course, leaders with vision who walk the talk. And let’s not forget Servant Leadership (why? I don’t know). Oh, I forgot resilience. Mary, could you text him to bring some resilience, before he leaves the supermarket?

I know about the shopping list but, excuse me, who is actually cooking?

Silence.

What do we do now? Well, when looking for recipes, that Talkers-Shoppers find them:  OK, a top down cascade of workshops to explain the  beauty of bottom up; an over inclusive training system to train how not to be over-inclusive;  the top 200 leaders attending Transformation Workshops (AKA pass the post-its)

And then what?

Still no cooks, no cooking, the kitchen is full of stuff. Leaders are bemused. No strategy of where to start, how to start, how to change, let alone how to scale.

We can do better. We must do better.

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Our Feed Forward Webinar Series is now available to watch on demand.

Watch our webinar: High touch, high tech in the digitlization era ^[11]

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

 

What attendees said:

‘It was a great pleasure to participate in today’s webinar…. If you would have been sitting next to me, you would have seen a lot of ‘head nodding’ and heard a couple of loud ‘yes’es’ from the bottom of my heart.’ 

 

WATCH NOW ^[11]

 

The writer Nicholas Carr ^[12] said ^[13] about the influence of the Internet on the way he wrote and, in general, on his overall cognitive habits: “Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words, now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.”

The new generation of managers are learning jet ski management fast. We ask people not to read a report but to ‘skim through’. We ask for an executive summary, not an executive amplification of the ‘so what’. We said, please summarise, not please elaborate further. Of course there is an ‘art of briefing’. But a good briefing is not necessarily a full argument on a diet.

Perhaps we don’t have the time for scuba diving on each piece of reality in front of us, but, we have to admit that jet skiing every single one will never get us anywhere serious.

I know, I know, my readers and friends love the ‘but we need both’ argument. Of course we do. My point is that we don’t have much diving and we are progressively creating management jet skiing as corporate competence. I don’t have hard data, but lots of evidence from my own consulting practice; we are going that way.

Not long ago you were perhaps used to being sent briefings, preparation materials and reading before meetings. If you were like many of my clients, you would have almost stopped the practice since (these maybe your words), ‘nobody reads anything’. Meetings are taking place with people reading the pre-meeting briefing on the spot, whilst also (a) listening to other people’s arguments, (b) texting somebody, and, who knows, (c) doing emails. And by the way, we need to make a decision.

There is a link, however, between the scuba diving and the jet skiing in management. It is called Critical Thinking. It has to do with acquiring habits to distinguish signal and noise, to prevent your own mental traps (fallacies and habits), to install rigour and, in general, make better judgements and decisions.

These skills can be taught. You would have thought that they are nurtured and taught at school, to start with. However, many schools are, on the contrary, reinforcing anti-critical thinking by uncritically adopting a massive digitalisation of ‘pupil work’, but not the skilling to navigate it.

In our organizations, I have said before, we need to put Critical Thinking in the water supply since this is the only hope for the coexistence of scuba diving and jet skiing management.

Exercising Critical Thinking is to the mind what going to the gym or running is to the body.

So far, jet skiing 1, scuba diving nil. Is this the progression of management?

Clicktivism is a form of digital /online engagement that requires the extraordinary effort of one of your fingers, possibly the index, to associate yourself with something… err.. digital, or the digital representation or articulation of a cause or an idea or a Facebook friend’s ingenious joke.

Sorry, this is my definition. Harsh? OK, this is how it is defined in Techopedia:

Clicktivism refers to the use of social media and the Internet to advance social causes. It uses the metrics available through Web analytics to optimise Web pages, emails and online petitions. This optimisation is meant to increase user engagement and maximise a campaign’s page views.

Clicktivism is a controversial form of digital activism. Proponents believe that applying advertising principles such as A/B testing increases the impact of a message by leveraging the Internet to further its reach. Opponents believe that clicktivism reduces activism to a mere mouse click, yielding numbers with little or no real engagement or commitment to the cause.

There you are. Some people are on my side, others will think I am missing the point of the clicks.

I have no problem with clicking and ‘liking it’ on Facebook. But I cannot accept that it only has a good side. Serious engagement needs action beyond your index finger. There are multiple examples of great social causes that have accumulated six figure clicks/likes but that, when the cause has asked for a bit of money, they only get three figures, if they’re lucky. A click is a great alibi.

Do we have the same inside the organization? I am not talking about the real clicks/likes that an internal digital platform (enterprise social network of some sort) may have, but their equivalents in human interaction terms.

Yes we have. It is represented by the email with a significant number of people on the distribution list, that contains a reply such as ‘OK with me, Peter’. Or the ones of the type ‘I am not sure I understand’, with no reference to what needs to be understood or the specific questions to ask.

Monosyllabic, written checking-in is hardly human engagement. Yet, we all do some of this at some point.

Let’s progress human evolution beyond clicking and liking, shall we?

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THIS THURSDAY – 18:00 BST/19:00 CET – join me and my team for our final webinar in the Feed Forward Series. ^[11]

 

Digitalization in the Covid era – High Touch and High Tech

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

As this new world order sees digital taking the lead – with remote working, virtual events and more connectivity than ever before – are we truly collaborative and how do be maintain the human factor?

Bring your critical thinking brain switched on. It’s a serious business. It may also be fun!

We hope you a can join us – register here ^[14]!

 

A book by ex-Microsoft researcher and now MIT prof Kentaro Toyama ^[15] (Geek Heresy, 20015) is not precisely novel on the topic of blindly accepting technology as the solution for all evils, but it is a refreshing account of what has been a personal journey.

Sent by Microsoft to India to solve social problems via technology, he ended up showing the shortcomings of the technology and the need to focus on the human side.

‘The only conclusion I could come to is that technology is secondary – ultimately the people and the institutions matter most’.

Which is the kind of statement that triggers from us a big ‘of course’, although we carry on as before ignoring its consequences and with zero behavioural change.

Amongst other things he points to the lack of critical thinking on this banking on technology and the urgent need to review our digital world.

In day-to-day management, more and more time is devoted to a digital system of communication and collaboration. Years ago we would have referred mainly to email, spending most of the time on Information Traffic Management, and management itself being a glorified form of Information Traffic Warden role. In places where email is now progressively taken over by digital chatting of some sort, perhaps via Enterprise Social Networks and other forms of collaborative systems, the new digital is now a form of, very useful, more appealing benign dictatorship.

Management remains an analogue affair. It’s human interaction, person-to-person, no screen to screen. If we lose analogue human social-ability in favour of the digitalization of our humanity, we will lose part of us and, in the process, the chance to involve the whole of our emotional and intellectual beings in that kind of activity that we call ‘work’.

Creativity manuals often suggest having two desks: the analogue, with no computers and the digital, with the screen in front of us. The trick is more than a clever suggestion. It actually transforms the way you work and interact. Most workstations, or offices, today look like places to hang a screen, often situated in front of us, not just ‘on the side’. The invitation to collaborate comes to us digitally. The shortcut and default is to email back, as opposed to, say, pick up the phone, let alone move your back side and visit the originator of the email down the corridor.

So, yes, have two desks. And force meetings with no devices in the room. I’m afraid that having them ‘in the room’ remains a problem: people will check, will use, will have it in silence and will continue to reply to emails.

Declare management interaction (discussion, debate, exploring of possibilities) a brain-to-brain affair with no digital intermediaries. The issue is not one of blaming the technology. The problem is our addiction to the instant messaging and the instant world.

Decouple digital and analogue. Each world is different. Protect both, protect their dedicated times, don’t mix them up. It works.

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Continue the conversation….

High touch and high tech in the digitalization era

Join Leandro Herrero and his team for their free webinar with Q&A on 13th August, 18:00 BST/19:00 CET.  Register Now! ^[11]

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative?

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

Register now! ^[11]

 

An indepth analysis of the world of ‘Digital Transformation’ shows two things. One is that there is no such thing as ‘Digital Transformation’ as a single domain or relatively well bordered area of expertise and action. In fact, you don’t have to look hard to realise that it is more difficult to find things that do not belong to ‘Digital Transformation’ than the ones that do. ‘Digital Transformation’ seems like a big supermarket with hundreds of shelves full of stuff.

It is unrealistic to expect a ‘single domain’ (area of expertise, and therefore expert) that can seriously contain: going paperless, better customer experience on websites, transforming customer experience, jobs done by software, artificial intelligence, analytics, robots doing human stuff, digital transactions, blockchain, digital/enterprise social networks, mobile technologies, self-service HR systems, real-time data, electronic documentation, social media, multi-channel services, more sophisticated CRM, automation, faster computing capacities, process (digital) re-engineering, and cloud services. And there are still many other supermarket shelves I have not named.

Calling all of these ‘Digital Transformation’ is the equivalent to calling ‘business’ to all you and I do. And finding ‘experts in business’. When clients tell me that they have appointed some people to lead ‘Digital Transformation’, I ask which one.

The other ‘finding’, shocking but not entirely unexpected, is the virtual lack of reference to behaviours. It’s not the first time that technology takes all the airtime and reduces behaviours to a by-product of what technology changes or will change. The mistake is a big one since behaviours are hardly a by-product. It is more the other way around, you need some behaviours in the system to support the digital transformation. These behaviours must be tailored to the objective (since the supermarket has hundreds of shelves) but at the very least they will have to deal with changes from audience (push, customer, information) to community (pull, engagement, reputation); speed; trust and risk (less people involved) and virtual collaboration. And, again, this is just the start. Just a few of the pillars. Each shelf has its own behavioural set.

The most efficient way to deal with that multi-targeted Digital Transformation is to look at the cultural and behavioural conditions that are needed, perhaps changed, ‘installed’, embedded and spread at a scale, to support it. The behavioural DNA (changeability vs change) will support/must support any of these digital shelves in change. Behaviours are not a by-product, an afterthought. They are the fabric, the tapestry on which everything else works. Starting with behaviours, is a smart move.

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Continue the conversations….

Join Leandro Herrero and his team for their free webinar with Q&A on 13th August, 18:00 BST/19:00 CET. Register Now! ^[11]

High touch and high tech in the digitalization era

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative?

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

Register Here! ^[11]

 

Model 1. The technology, for example in the form of digital platforms such as Enterprise Social Networks, ESN (Yammer type) speeds some interactions, facilitates communication, provides a key vehicle for collective framing and shared common understanding (usually from the top of the organization), creates some spontaneous or engineered groups of ‘common  interest’ but, above all, provides a single common brochure/repository/news feed for the company (traditional intranet for example). In this model, ‘Digital’ does not change the nature of the (cross) collaboration much, or the fundamental activity of the company and its groupings.

Model 2. The technology serves to connect otherwise unconnected, or poorly connected, groups, and, as such, creates new reasons for shared understanding and collective action. It creates proximity, otherwise perhaps in doubt, and an ability to share ideas, answer questions, help other groups (occasionally or more formally). In this model, ‘Digital’ is network building in its own merits and the real origin of (new) cross collaboration, for example, otherwise not planned or anticipated. It does not change much the nature of work in the networks or clusters connected, but changes their relationships and their learning opportunity, and also creates a possible, more cohesive shared sense of belonging.

Model 3. Technology is on purpose a ‘crowd-enabler’. ‘Digital’ allows and prompts everybody to possibly talk to anybody across borders and structures. It allows for example to launch ‘global challenges’ and incentivised, or not, semi-permanent Q&A sessions. In this model, ‘Digital’ is focused on the individual, not the clusters, networks or teams (which it had little control over it). ‘Digital’ here changes the nature of the cross-collaboration in the form of a permanent (if desired) ‘digital-face-to-face’. ‘Digital’ here is very much ‘core’, sitting above everything else, perhaps ‘the way we also work’.

These three models are useful to at least reflect upon what we may expect from ‘the adoption of an internal digital strategy’. Very often, a significant investment is made to install a global ESN, just to be followed by an also significant disappointment about its use and effectiveness. Technology is still today ‘installed’ in a way that seems to expect a following miracle in cross-collaboration or even (more naively) a fundamental change of ‘the nature of work’.

At the core of these issues are three things:

(1) The knowledge of what the technology can do (easy);
(2) The agreement on why the technology has been ‘installed’ (difficult: some may think it should be a sophisticated brochure, others a communication system, others an internal reproduction of a cosy Facebook; None of these are the same. Start with the ‘why’ before you look for the miracle);
(3) The pre-existing behavioural DNA (or the created one, e.g. via Viral Change ^[16]™) required to use the technology in a way that serves the declared purpose, the why in (2); this is a more difficult one.

For example in a very tribal, silo-like, fragmented enterprise, a model 3 type of crowd-enabled collaboration may completely fail; model 2 may have some effects, and model 1 may have no trouble, even if with very modest, if at all, effects on cross collaboration with perhaps little changes in the ‘ways of work’.

I have adapted for the organization these 3 models from the ones proposed at macro-level by Bennet & Segerberg in ‘The Logic of Connective Action; digital media and the personalization of contentious politics’ (2013). Model 1 is the equivalent of what the authors called ‘Organizational brokered collective action’; model (2) is ‘Organizational enabled connective action’, and model (3) is Crowed-enabled connective action.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

High touch & high tech in the digitalization era

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Pre-Covid we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? Join us for our final webinar in the Feed Forward Series – Thursday, 13th August. 18:00 BST/19:00 CET, Register Now! ^[11]

 

 

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

 

‘Lasting capacity’ must be a keyword for change management and its methods. The issue today is less about how to go from A to Z,  and more how, in doing so, the project, programme, process etc, is or is not, building long term capacity for change.

Methods take you from A to Z but not necessarily build any learning capacity, other than perhaps paying some lip service. Platforms, however, include a method but ‘leave behind’ a capacity, new competences, new ways of working and perhaps a new style of leadership.

What we have learnt from many years of Viral Change™ is precisely that. Outstanding clients were always the first to point it out: now we know how to work peer-to-peer, how to use the informal organization, how to do storytelling, how to identify and use influencers, how to distinguish and manage behaviours, and, ultimately, how our leadership model became small and we needed to grow it in order to integrate Backstage Leadership™, for example.

There you are, Santa got them all, when in reality we just wanted to go from A to Z.

Today, ‘change methods’ that do not focus on legacy, and that still are presented and sold as the mechanics of going from A to Z, are not worth the money.

Once the objectives of the ‘change’ have been declared achieved (perhaps a reorganization, a deployment of values, a customer-centric change programme), if all we can say is that those goals have been achieved, but we have little to say about what has changed forever in the operating system of the organization, or what we have learnt, we have, sorry to say, failed miserably.

Reaching the (change) destination is a pass, a baseline. Learning about the journey and establishing a long term platform for change (change-ability) is the real goal.

We must leave behind more than an expensive set of powerpoints and dozens, if not hundreds of meetings, powered by workshopsterone.

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Continue the conversation.

Join our first, free webinar, The Myths of Change ^[11], TOMORROW – 18th June, with Leandro Herrero and his team. Register NOW! ^[17]

Traditional management and a great deal of academic thinking is responsible for the colossal failure of ‘change programmes’.

The first in our series of webinars will debunk uncontested assumptions in this area and uncover the alternatives, whilst considering why this debunking of myths is even more relevant today in the current exceptional environment.

To change to ‘the new normal’ we must think and act differently in the management of our organizations, particularly in the areas of change and transformation. We must abandon change as something imposed in favour of people becoming true agents. Organizations that have mastered this have been in ‘the new normal’ for a while!

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Out Now! – The Flipping Point ^[10] – Deprogramming Management by Leandro Herrero – his new booking challenging the trend for adopting absurd management ideas. Management needs deprogramming. This book of 200, tweet-sized, vignettes, looks at the other side of things – flipping the coin. It asks us to use more rigour and critical thinking in how we use assumptions and management practices that were created many years ago.

Extracts taken from my new book The Flipping Point. ^[10] A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to be reached. The Flipping Point ^[10] contains 200 short vignettes exploring what ’deprogramming management’ may look like.  Read a recent review ^[18].

 

Social media is a colossal echo chamber.

Social media is a colossal echo chamber where all cognitive processes are surrendered to one single driver: confirmation bias. People read what they want to read. People hear what they want to hear. Preconceived ideas are confirmed. Common enemies become more common. The system increases mistrust of others outside the chamber, whilst reinforcing one single acceptable worldview. Homophily (bonding and binding with ‘people like me’) rises steeply. The population in that colossal echo chamber becomes more homogeneous and predictable all the time, so that social media algorithms become more robust and your targeted news and advertising reaches you safely and securely. It’s a wonderful life.

Social media is a colossal echo chamber where all cognitive processes are surrendered to one single driver: confirmation bias. The only solution is periodical rehab. Make yourself offline for a while. Read books with physical pages. Send handwritten letters to friends.

 

Computer screens are the new silos.

Stop complaining about silos between divisions. Computer screens are the new silos. If you amalgamate non-collaborating silo A with non-collaborating silo B with the hope of creating a collaborating non silo C, good luck. People will bring their screens with them anyway.

Stop complaining about silos between divisions. Computer screens are the new silos. Most structural solutions (amalgamation of divisions or groups) are a response to behavioural problems (e.g. lack of collaboration). Entire reorganizations, with hundreds of people disrupted, are triggered by very few people being the problem. The so-called Big Collaboration Problem between Marketing and Sales can actually be traced back to Peter, Head of Marketing, and Mary, Head of Sales. The rest have no problem but are forced to migrate with their screens. I believe that most silo problems have names and surnames.

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Continue the conversation.

Find out more about our free webinar, High touch and high tech in the digitalization era ^[11], on 13th August, with Leandro Herrero and his team of organizational architects.

The ‘Covid-19 era’ seems to have discovered ‘digital’! Suddenly the world has been ‘zooming’ in the way that Sherry Turkle pointed out many years ago in her book ‘Life on screen’. Before this extraordinary disruption we had all become hyper-connected. But, did we become hyper-collaborative? This webinar will bring insights into the not very well solved tandem ‘high touch- high tech’ and how we can shape a future where the human condition wins.

 

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Out Now! – The Flipping Point ^[10] – Deprogramming Management by Leandro Herrero – his new booking challenging the trend for adopting absurd management ideas. Management needs deprogramming. This book of 200, tweet-sized, vignettes, looks at the other side of things – flipping the coin. It asks us to use more rigour and critical thinking in how we use assumptions and management practices that were created many years ago.

The great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about the early 20^th Century Spanish society as being ‘led by people who had neither the necessary talent nor desire to transcend their own personal inadequacies’. ‘These existential shortcomings’, Ortega said, ‘were transferred to the institutions these mediocre people headed to’ (1929, translated into English as Invertebrate Spain 45 years later!).

This transfer of personal inadequacy to ‘the institution’ is similar in the smaller ecosystem of the company. Organizational toxicity, teams that don’t work, decisions not followed up, these don’t all fall from the sky and can hardly be attributed to external circumstances, which are out of our control. The problem is most likely inside.

Our ‘structures’ are a function of ourselves. There is no such thing as ‘slow decision making’ as an entity; there are people making slow decisions. There is no ‘bureaucratic organization’; there are people behaving in a particular way. Not even ‘a culture of’ can be assessed outside the individual agents.

By diverting the focus (or the blame) to ‘the entity’ (structure, process, culture, leadership) we are most likely externalizing the problem and absolving ourselves from all sins. Not terribly good critical thinking.

By the way, there is no ‘they’ either.

Yes, there is a group effect, a critical mass, a social copying (‘Homo Imitans’ ^[19])  that multiply both the shortcomings and the progressive achievements. But this is triggered by us, ourselves, the greater exporters and externalizers, from us to the collective. Far from me to dismiss this. My consulting work is based upon mastering the large scale of things in the organization: change, leadership, transformation. And these are ‘masses’ (using the same Ortega’s terminology), ‘network effects’ if you want a fancier term.

But in the end, the individual is the unit, good or bad. The good news is that there is also the precise opposite of the title. We can be, ourselves, the biggest exporters of creativity, innovation, positivism and, dare I say, goodness. Margaret Mead dixit: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

There is a big difference between copying and reverse engineering. Many people in business wish they could copy the great successes, the visible achievers. Perhaps not the Google, Apple, Amazon etc., but other models and ways. After all, we have been told for years that ‘Best Practices’ are the most important source of learning. In the old days, we were told we needed to copy the GE workouts, or the Japanese Quality circles, or the Kaizen ways. Today, other models such as Agility, or Holacracy and Zappos, or both, all in one, reach the headlines of the ‘latest in management’.

There is an intrinsic difficulty in many models: their surprising lack of transferability. Some are more transferable than others, but most of the time doing the transplant is a dangerous business.

I think that reverse engineering and pausing (deconstruct, unbundle, think critically about what you see) has greater merit than the ‘model transplant’. Reverse engineering allows you to find out the principles before the outcomes, the rules of the game before the endgame, the deeper human dynamics before the organization chart.

When I launched Viral Change™ ^[20] formally in 2006, we were already on a continuous process of reverse engineering people mobilization. And the two places to start the unbundling were unconventional (for management standards) : social movements and network theory. Close to 2008 and then until 2012 and beyond, it was obvious to me that we were missing the greatest source of knowledge for people mobilization: political (science, movement) marketing. You’ll recognise the milestones as the US presidential campaigns. Since then, we have been dissecting and reverse engineering the political mobilization platforms, including digital activism. This is what has given the Viral Change Mobilizing Platform the ability to host and provide an ‘operating system’ for things as diverse as ‘standard’ change management, employee engagement or cultural change. Viral Change is today a fully fleshed out mobilizing platform as opposed to a ‘change method’. (it has methods inside).

I see again and again in my consulting practice the presence of some organizational designs, in small or in big, that have been ‘installed’ in particular organizations with the hope that, being a mirror, or a copy, of what other successful people have done (typically in manufacturing) they per se will become the vehicle of success. Risky business, when deprived from context and culture. A good idea in A does not make the same good idea for B.

The old Best Practices and its sister Benchmarking were successful at pointing to what other people had achieved, but often created an illusion of solution by transplanting them or copying them. If I had to trace back my very early interest in the organizational world, coming from clinical psychiatry and academia, about hundred moons ago, I would say it was this question: how is it possible that organization A and B share more or less the same resources in size and market, similar culture, similar product portfolio, similar industry sector, but whilst A is extremely successful, B fails miserably?

Pretending to become A when you are B is the wrong way to approach it. Deconstructing success and reverse-engineering both, their success and our own failure, is a good start.

There are always people who ‘don’t get it’, are against cultural change efforts, do not support a programme, torpedo it, or are simply a toxic of some sort. Some of them may be senior people with senior bonuses, or at the very top, or a bit below, or combinations.

The traditional thinking says: time out! There is nothing I can do because if the top doesn’t get it, nobody will. Let’s spend the time trying to convince the top, and the next down top, and the next next, that this is good. Only then, we can change … the company/the world/anything. Which is a good explanation of why we are not that good at changing …the company/the world/anything.

Rational PowerPoint presentations to the top, led by well intentioned champions of the idea, internal and external consultants, trying to explain why ‘this is what we need’. The tribunal (there is no other way to describe that Executive Committee) pushes back with things such as: give us examples, tell us something concrete, concrete, concrete, very concrete, and what exactly is going to happen on Wednesday 23rd in the afternoon.

Let’s assume here that you have the extraordinary luck of a visionary leader who says: let’s do it! When can we start?! So you do. But you still have the problem of many others who ‘don’t get it’.

If revolutions were to start when everybody is convinced that the revolution is needed, including the ones who could, or should, start a revolution or could torpedo it, no revolution would have ever taken place.

The aim of a large scale behavioural and cultural change (as we do in Viral Change™) is not to fight these people, disable them, argue with them, convince them, detoxify them or have a long and rational discussion to rehabilitate them. The goal is to reach a threshold of critical mass of engaged, committed, positive and forward looking people, who are actively making changes, that makes the other irrelevant.

It’s a question of critical mass, not seniority or hierarchical power. When things are moving, changes take place, differences are noticed, the Opposition starts to fragment into different groups. One, the ones who continue to oppose and can’t handle it. They either leave or have gastric ulcers. Two, the ones who can see and hear and become supporters. Three, the chronically neutral. By the way, a subgroup of Two are the ones who say, ‘I have always believed that this was the right thing to do’, even if they were the ones ready to kill you. This beautiful tribe deserves a big, big, big smile, followed by a ‘thanks for your continuous support, sir’.

What if there is still a fierce opposition at the top? Many years of organizational consulting with companies across the world, many, many Viral Change™ programmes later, many years of living on both sides of the fence of leadership, have found me the perfect formula, which I am happy to share with you. Here it is. If you are in a company, as an employee, manager, external consultant of an organizational type of some sort, where the top, or quasi top ‘don’t get it’, are against cultural change efforts, do not support a programme, torpedo it, or are simply a toxic of some sort, with some of them being senior people with senior bonuses, at the very top, or a bit below, or combinations, there is one clear and powerful, strategy: leave.

PS. If you are a consultant, don’t forget to give them the telephone number of your competitors.

Change management, or management of change. Thank God there can only be two permutations, because they are the most over-used terms in organizations. But, there are three very different models of change.

Model one, I call a ‘Destination Model’. Here it’s all about going from A to Z. Z is fixed, usually some sort of Promised Land; and A is the departure, and invariably a worse place than Z. This model of change is concerned with getting to Z. The language is one of milestones, timeframes, costs, and Key Performance Indicators. In other words, there’s a method. I call people in this model “The Methodists’.

I call model two a ‘Journey Model’. Model two also has its destinations but here it’s more about the ‘how’ you get there, what you learn in the process, the experience, perhaps the engagement of people. Model two people are mostly ‘travellers’. People who use Appreciative Inquiry, for example dwell here.

There is a model three. It’s the ‘Building Model’. This is about the building of the company’s DNA. In this model, there are destinations and journeys as well, but the key focus is not just on reaching Z, or, on the journey as you’re going to Z, but on the new DNA that is being created. A lasting environment, an organization that has, not just changed (model one) or has had a good change experience (model two) but has created a new competence: change-ability. These people are builders.

The three models are very different. Traditional management uses model one. That’s why we have an industry of ‘change management’, which is, in reality, more project or programme management with proliferation of Gantt Charts. Today however, model one, for all its merits of reaching Z (and getting yourself rewarded in the process) misses the point of sustainability. Then comes model two, or ‘the journey,’ which some management still treat as “New Age Stuff’ with lower credibility.

The goal of model three is to make the word ‘change’ redundant. In model three, ‘Change Management’ has become ‘management’. It’s a permanent ability based on a particular behavioural DNA.

If model one is milestones and model two is experience, model three is behaviours and culture.  Model one is a one–off. Model two is learning, which may or may not be one-off. Model three is creating the long term fabric, culture, change-ability of the organization, as opposed to just going from A to Z (but still you get to Z).

There are choices. Be clear. Forget ‘change management’. Reach a destination, learn from the journey, but if you don’t create long term DNA and culture, you’ve lost a great deal of opportunities and possibilities.

Is LinkedIn a Digital Rolodex? A digital Resume/CV Library? Do you connect with people who have already given you the business card, sort of? Some LinkedIn members adhere to the rule of not accepting connections from people they don’t know. Indeed this is a LinkedIn recommendation and part of the system, as they describe and explain.  Other people accept everybody who asks. Obviously, these are two very different interpretations of ‘linking in’. For the former, LinkedIn is a controlled acceptance of being part of my ‘library’. For the latter, it is partially the same, but the primary goal, stated or not, is to increase the size of the network. And this increase is likely to take place via people you don’t know, that is a, ‘Weak Link In’.

‘Weak Links’ (technically ‘Weak Ties’), are an old sociological concept that has proven very valuable. They are the opposite to  ‘Strong Links’ (technically ‘Strong Ties’)

In 1973, the sociologist Mark Granovetter ^[21], wrote a very important article with the title: ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’. The title says it all. Your weak ties (people you don’t know well, a bit distant, not strong connections, but certainly not zero) open your horizons. In Granovetter’s research, the chances of getting recommended for a job are greater when coming from weak ties (people who don’t know you well) than from strong ties (people who know you well; too well?). That was a counter-intuitive finding at the time, as much as today.

LinkedIn is obviously a spectrum of Weak and Strong Ties. People very protective of their connections, who will never accept anybody who is not ‘known to them’, create a digital Rolodex and, in the extreme, miss the point completely in terms of the Granovetter factor.  Other people on the other side of the spectrum, create a wealth of Weak Ties (the Strong Ties are a given, but may be a small part) and they are higher in ‘connectivity  strength’, using Granovetter’s concept.

I think there is a case for a Linked Out (as in out in the world) system. Social networking today is the vehicle for Strong and Weak ties. Concepts are now completely redefined in digital terms. We need more research to define which ones are more powerful. My gut feeling is that Granovetter still wins today.

There was this big conference that was introduced by the chairman in this way: ‘Welcome everybody. Lovely to have you all here; now we can all look at our screens together’. There was a time when people took notes in conferences, now people tweet whilst ‘listening’.  Why? Because they can.

It’s quite normal now in some conferences to have a twitter feed on a large screen next to the main presentation so people can see and read in ‘real time’ the instant reaction of the audience to what the presenter is saying. Why do we do this? Because we can.

In smaller meetings, it used to be considered rude to have your laptop on and do emails whilst somebody was presenting. It was rude, but tolerated. Now there are less laptops on the table, but people are looking down at their blackberries and smartphones. ‘Homo Erectus’ is being replaced by ‘Homo Thumbing‘, which is an illuminated Homo-Looking-Down.

I have run client meetings with apocalyptic warnings against doing this and descriptions upfront of the consequences (from being put on spot by me, including CEOs, to paying a nominal fine to buy the beers in the evening). Everybody complies at the beginning. By the end of the first day, trespassers are apparent. By the second day, everybody ignores the warning and looks down again, thumbing with an apparent vengeance.

There is an issue here of etiquette, politeness and respect that is big enough. But even bigger is the issue of busy-ness and the apparent inevitability of answering a trivial message on the spot. Our hyper-connected world has given us enormous possibilities but also a new Ego Archetype that reads like this: ‘What we say, surely, must be incredibly important for many people; to say it immediately is paramount, and if we don’t live in instant reaction mode, instant thinking, instant presence, instant action, (perhaps not instant coffee), there is something wrong with us’. Why do we react and reply to the command of a beep of the smartphone? Because we can.

Human interaction is being digitally re-defined every single day in millions of places. I don’t have a good answer but my question is: What are we, human beings, losing? I know it may be a naive question but ‘the new normal’ bothers me.

In a study conducted with Fortune 100 companies, and quoted in Sherry Turkle’s book ‘Reclaiming Conversations ^[22]’, the following statistics about what people do during conference calls are revealing, if not a confirmation of what you have always suspected: 65% of people are doing other work at the same time; 63% do emails; 55% are eating or cooking; 47% go to the bathroom and 6% are also in another call.

I do not have these statistics in my case, but, in the conference calls I participate with clients, I have always suspected that the number of people emailing was higher. It’s a relief to know that 37% are not. Also, I think that close to 50% are taking a nap. I also suspect that a percentage, to be defined by sophisticated research I will undertake at some point when I don’t have so many conference calls, are in the wrong meeting and/or have dialled the wrong number.

Some clients have a default solution on ‘a conference call every week’. When the team is small and they know each other well, this works very well. It could be a refreshing way of not just updating each other but ‘checking in’ the collective tribe. Connectivity, communication and collaboration works well here. But when digital connectivity has been imposed as a structural solution for collaboration with lots of people who are not a tribe ( a group, a team, a collective with a purpose) the risk is that you fool yourself. Sure, something good will come up, but at a cost.

What is interesting is that in my unofficial, unscientific statistics, 90% of those attending these swarmed conference calls, feel very frustrated with the experience. But we keep doing it.

Sherry Turkle ‘reclaiming conversation’ theme, the latest in a series of her publications about the digitalization of the self and other changes in our humanity, is a reminder of the need to go deeper and find ways to achieve that ‘conversation’: home, family, kids, the office, the Strategic Business Unit. That may or may not entail a digital flash mob in the form of massive conference calls.

Digital collaboration will get more and more sophisticated, and technology will offer more and more sophisticated forms. We all will be tempted to use, and will be users. But the more we go in that direction, the more we need to ask ourselves if what we are achieving is digital connectivity or human collaboration. They may or may not go together.

The topic is far from peripheral. It impacts on our human nature that is progressively reshaped. Turkle, MIT professor, trained psychoanalyst, serious social researcher and writer, is very worried. Others, and there is a legion, would say that she misses the point and that the extraordinary connectivity and its potential is short of evolutionary Darwinism achievement. The origin of the Species now contains a chapter on Facebook.

My own view is that Turkle is right, in a minority, and may lose the argument. But my day to day organizational work sees the struggle between the illusion of collaboration and the ubiquitous connectivity, the fallacy of a technological solution for behavioural problems, and the corrosion of the conversation on behalf of the bullet points.

Something for the weekend. Written back in 2017 but still rings true today!

We naturally retreat to comfort zones. If we didn’t, we would not survive, physically or psychologically. We live in Confirmation Bias Land: we hear what we want to hear, and have fixed ideas that we want to be endorsed. It’s all pretty unconscious. It’s survival.

When it comes to information, we surround ourselves with what confirms our views of the world. Many years ago, pre-digital, when newspapers were still the main source of information and hook to the world, people read or subscribed to their tribal ones. There were ( as they are still today) right wing, and left wing, and middle of the road newspapers. They were easily classified as liberal or conservative or ultra-something.

Then Mr Digital came to town. Clever baby digital allowed you to choose what the system would filter for you. Big news outlets promised you not to bombard your inbox with anything you did not want. Tick here and here and you will never know about the unticked boxes. You could literally create you Daily Me and keep warm and safe.

Mr Digital entered adolescence and then stopped asking you. The algorithms, which I liked to picture as hundreds of little digital men crawling your webpages, would know what you want. Today they know you, indeed, follow you, and miraculously keep offering you that shirt that you saw online but never really wanted to buy. Whether you are in a theatre ticket site, or the weather forecast or a sports feed, that shirt never goes away. Recently, I surrendered miserably and did buy that shirt, but the algorithms, those idiots, kept offering it to me.

Forget Big Brother. I am not talking about that. I know I have one. We need the other siblings, brothers, sisters, and also cousins. The Daily Me is now a Me by The Minute. It is Bubble World. Obama put it nicely in his farewell speech:

For too many of us, it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighbourhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship, increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste – all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that’s out there.

There is only one way to be saved. Get exposed to as many sources and inputs as possible. Diversity of news is OK, but not enough. It is diversity of topics. For me, as alien as possible.

My rule of thumb: at least 50% of what to read, be exposed to, should have little or nothing to do with your job/business area. That increases the probability of avoiding unconscious filtering since you would have less preconceived ideas. And your mind would welcome the Spring Cleaning and fresh air.

My only limit to this is toxicity. You would not want to be in a room full of smokers smoking. So, living in the UK, I stay away from the Daily Mail.

Attention Chief Transformation Officers, Offices of Transformation, Change Management Units, and Change Offices, and Projects of Future A,B,C,. Units of Massive Digitalisation, and Acceleration and…

Don’t change bits and call it transformation

Don’t polish costs and call it alignment

Don’t rearrange the chairs and call it renewal

Don’t kid yourselves

The quote is from the novel ‘The Leopard’, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and I have been prompted by an article on a hot topic these days, how philanthropy at great scale may do more harm than good. Literally by changing things within the system as opposed to fixing the system itself.

The same applies to our organizations. We do Tweaking Programmes because we had learnt that continuous improvement is good. But continuous improvement died of exhaustion out of improving things a long time ago. Today, the markets have no patience. ‘Incrementalism is the enemy of innovation’, Negroponte of MIT Labs used to say.

Doing projects that ‘appear to change’ may be the worse you can do. If you are in the business of cutting costs, call it Cutting Cost Project. If you are in the business of Tweaking some Annoying Processes, call it like that. This is not Corporate Transformation, it is called good management, and it was invented about 40 years ago. At least.

Not a long time ago I was invited to see the serious commitment to digitalization  of a very big technology company. Their slides talked about serious digitalization of everything, form processes to products. As a showcase, I was shown the change in layout and style of the HR and OD floor, now very funky, and modern, and with lots of screens. I was under the deep impression that this was a little example, and show of pride, a tour, before going to the meeting room to see the full presentation of their digitalization achievements. How fool I was. That was it. The commitment translated into furniture and interior design. Don’t think I am talking about a Mickey Mouse company. This was a very serious global one.

‘If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change’ means the more Tweaking Departments implement Tweaking (Change Management) Initiatives, the more nothing will change. As I have written before, the system prevents itself from solving problems created by the system. The Serious Transformation prevents itself by running a  myriad of change management projects.

For nothing to change, some things must change. And that is a warning.

PS: I’ve seen many Agile programmes run in the most un-agile way. Elephants showing slides of gazelles.