4 interesting HBR blog posts related to change management and leadership have been published recently:
- Peer to peer interactions may be the single most neglected lever of change, say Jon R. Katzenbach and Zia Khan in their interesting post “Positive Peer Pressure: A Powerfull Ally to Change“. Hence the necessity for change leaders to know the internal social dynamics. To me, this also fits very well with step 2 of Kotter’s 8 steps framework: building a guiding coalition for change, which is not necessarily restricted to senior rank executives but all people in the organisation who will be able to positively influence the rest.
- The Ford turnaround: a year ago, the carmaker reported a +14Bn$ loss; this year it reported a profit of 2.7Bn$. Tony Schwartz writes about the strategy enabling the turnaround and also the huge role played by CEO Alan Mulally to embark all his staff on a change journey to make Ford a higher quality/more fuel efficient/safer cars manufacturer. A key ingredient in this success is the trutrh telling culture he has been able to install.
- Design for behavior change: in this post, Tim Brown shares 3 tips for designing products, services, and/or basically anything meant to make people change their behaviour: 1. Create simple new digital tools to provide feedback – 2. Invent to the future consumer not the present customer – 3. Be patient with monitoring success
- Finally, my favorite HBR blogger Rosabeth Moss Kanter shares 13 unlucky mistakes in managing traumatic change and explains how to avoid them:
- Pressure to act quickly undermines values and culture
- Management exercises too much control
- Urgent tasks divert leaders’ attention from the mood of the organization
- Communication is haphazard, erratic and uneven
- Uncertainty creates anxiety
- Employees hear it from the media first
- There is no outlet for emotions
- Key stakeholders are neglected
- It seems easier to cut than redeploy
- Casualties dominate attention
- Changes are expedient, not strategic
- Leaders lose credibility
- Gloom and doom fill the air
Good reading
