Appetite for Change

This week I enjoyed reading 2 articles from the HBR blogs on 2 very different subjects:

1. Scott Anthony reveals the results of his survey about the most disruptive companies of the decade. Precisely, the question was: “Which companies do you think have done the best job of driving growth through disruption — transforming what exists or creating what doesn’t through simplicity, convenience, affordability or accessibility — between 2000-2009?”.  Scott Anthony grouped the nominated companies in 3 categories: established high-tech, established non high-tech and emerging companies. The winners of each category were respectively Apple, Walmart and Google.  The runners-up were Cisco systems, Verizon and Amazon. Number 1 lesson for me is that they are all american companies; I don’t know about the geographical spreading of the survey but still: US-based companies are unarguably the leaders of change and innovation.  Scott Anthony predicts this won’t be the case in this new decade, but gives no explanation for that and I don’t really see why it shouldn’t be true anymore, despite the rise of  emerging country based businesses: it seems to me that change, innovation and research have always been at the forefront of the US economy (baring in mind I’m not the most competent person to make realistic predictions on the subject!) . Read the full article here
2. Gill Corkindale gives a set of useful tips about how to keep your action plan  on track. This may sound very basic but many change efforts, individual or organisational, fade simply because the ambitious action plan that was so enthusiastically set up is not followed through. Of course this may just be the symptom of a lack of stakeholder engagement or generally weak change management efforts. It can also be at the cause of a failed effort, for example if the potential threats to the plan have not been well anticipated. Among Gill’s advices, I find the following particularly important (full article here):

• Ensure that notes are taken at meetings and distributed afterwards, appoint project managers and allocate key responsibilities.
• Hold team members to real deadlines and schedule regular meetings to give updates and monitor progress
• Remind people that day-to-day business must not marginalise or overwhelm change initiatives
• Bring in external consultants and external stakeholders to provide new perspectives and energy when plans are flagging (probably a bit of self-interest in this one)
• Ensure you have backing at the highest levels for change initiatives and appoint change champions across the organisation

Happy reading! More web reviews here

Tags: action plan, implementation, Innovation