Extracts taken from my new book ‘The Flipping Point‘. [1] A flipping point in the trend for adopting absurd management ideas needs to be reached. ‘The Flipping Point‘ [1], contains 200 short vignettes exploring what ’deprogramming management’ may look like.
Stop announcing change. Change. Then announce that it’s happening.
Stop announcing change. Change. Then announce that it’s happening. In fact, it’s broader than change. Don’t announce. Ever. I’m going to show you a video: just show it. Some people spend half their life announcing the other half.
Many reorganizations and change programmes are loudly announced to people with the best of intentions, so people get used to the idea. There maybe a legal requirement for an early warning in some countries. But going over the top on this, is simply prolonging the agony and creating extraordinary anxiety. If I sound as though I’m advocating secrecy, I will change the sound. I am advocating sanity. Very frequently I have found myself in situations when the client’s announcement of change will impact on a tiny minority, yet the apocalyptic communication has created lots of sleepless nights for people who had no reason not to sleep well.
Change Management is dead. It needs a funeral not a function.
Change Management is dead. It needs a funeral not a function
The term has become so overused that it is meaningless. Change management often stands for ‘making stuff happen’. IT people hijacked it a long time ago and it means implementation. Managers of change use it and it often means 8 meaningless steps that cannot be implemented sequentially in real life. Technology implementation people use it but it means anything that is not on the technology side. With such levels of accuracy, I prefer not to treat my house move as change management. Or, I will never move, or it will cost me 10 times more, or the expensive Russian porcelain will be broken.
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This book asks you to use more rigour and critical thinking in how you use assumptions and management practices that were created many years ago. Our real and present danger is not a future of robots and AI, but of current established BS. In this book, you are invited to the Mother of All Call Outs!
Available from major online bookstores [2].
[1]
Visit The Flipping Point [1] to learn more about the book and other services:
Request [3]a keynote and Q&A on topics from the book.
[4] Request [3] one of our webinars:
- The myths of change. How traditional management and academic thinking is responsible for the colossal failure of change programmes. Debunking uncontested assumptions. Looking at the alternatives.
- The myths of company culture. Stuck in old concepts. How we have made cultural change hard and often impossible. The failure of communication programmes. The key to successful mobilizing of people for a purpose.
- The myths of management. Empowerment, ownership, accountability and other little challenged ideas. Non-management myths. What new management may look like.