in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
Questioning, one of my favorite activities. I’ve been spotting a lot of it lately, and that’s good. Whether it’s because we are entering the last month of the year or because people are feeling the need to reflect, we need to be constantly questioning the obvious.
The obvious, if you’re succeeding, should also include this “change your course question” by Rosabeth Kanter: What is going to destroy our business, and are you taking steps to do it yourself before others do it to you?…
Scott Berkun has a great quote about resistance to ideas: The default state of an idea is non-adoption.
Reflecting on this quote, it useful to consider why that is so. For many reasons, people, in any arena, will resist change. That is just the way it is, so it is best to expect it.
While too many to list, there are commonalities between them. Here are five common sources of resistance to change:…
This is the third of a series of weekly posts where I will answer a few common questions about innovation. Please feel free to add your own response. Also, if you have any questions you think we should discuss, let me know.
All the time.
The best and most productive activity and organization can do, is to always be thinking about how they will become irrelevant. Think about how you will be disrupted, and disrupt your success.
And, it all starts with the individual:…
in Leadership
This is a guest post from John Baldoni. John is an internationally recognized leadership consultant, coach, author and speaker. This excerpt is adapted from his newest book, The Leader’s Pocket Guide.
One reason we fear change is because we feel a loss of control. And while you cannot control the change process, you can control how you and your team react to it.
Assert your ownership. Doing so shifts the emphasis from something being done to you to something over which you have control. Consider these three questions to help you take charge:
Owning the change process and making it work for you is critical to demonstrating resilience as well as an ability to move forward. It is very definitely a mark of leadership.
P.S. I highly recommend my readers to get Mr. Baldoni’s Leadership pocket book guide because it is full of useful to the point advice like this on a variety of leadership and management topics.
in Strategy
“You must accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Serenity Prayer
Like you, in my neck of the woods, I’ve observed that business leaders have a complete disregard for the forces of change in the world and much less in their industry. They understand their business very well, but not what is changing or will change their business.
And if they think they have an idea of what is changing, they adopt a “wait and see” approach and look at their competitors for direction.
Basically, their business acumen is non-existent. They base their strategy (if any) on luck and hope. And you know very well that luck and hope is not a strategy. They obviously think that because they’ve “been doing this for a long time” and it has worked for them thus far, that they somehow control their fate.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Three fundamental lessons about change are of paramount importance (from the book The Strategist):…
in Innovation
Here’s an ongoing problem:
When leadership tries to implement change within an organization, the biggest objection from employees usually is: “You don’t understand my situation.” What this statement really means is: “You do not know my job. You do not realize what I have to deal with on a regular basis, and now you are instituting yet another initiative that will make things more difficult for me on a daily basis.”
When employees do not feel understood, they resist change more fiercely.…
in Innovation, Leadership
Remember last month I told you about a client who told his staff that they needed to start thinking about what they’ve never thought about? Well this past week I went back to check up on them and see exactly what had happened since our last conversation.
Absolutely nothing.
I wasn’t surprised. The predictable ‘I haven’t had time to think about it’ came up. Sure, they definitely have some ideas like focusing on not just businesses but also consumers and creating a brand for that. Though that’s just an idea and they know they have to do it but again nothing has happened.
The President of the company understands that they need to make time to ‘think about what they’ve never thought about’ but hasn’t really made the decision to do so. Well let me tell you something:
For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently. …
