Archive for June, 2010

Is Your Business Model Being Wrecked By Outside Forces?

After a very exhausting day, we watched three television shows last night.  That’s very unusual, but I couldn’t handle much more than that.  During the second show, three things struck me.  We had recorded all three shows on our DVR system, we didn’t have to schedule our lives around what day/time the programs aired and we didn’t watch any commercials.  Many of you may have done the same thing last night.

The point for the advertising industry is that DVR technology and whatever else comes next are wrecking their business model and will soon destroy it.  The internet is doing the same thing to daily newspapers.  Now, apply that awareness to your company.

What technology, economic force, generational expectation, political swing or customer preference could wreck your business model?  I don’t know about you, but if I see a light up ahead, I want to know if it’s a light at the end of the tunnel or an oncoming train. 

Granted, some industry changes take place so slowly that they sneak up on us.  I hear that a lot from clients.  In spite of that. watch ahead for what’s next.  The lesson is to use innovation, strategic planning, organizational restructuring and leadership not just to keep up with your industry, but to set the standard for what’s next in your industry.  If you do this, your organization will be more stable, more flexible and more profitable.

From Goals to Meaningful Change

In spite of best thinking on change management, most efforts to improve organizational results still fail to achieve the desired results.  What is the missing link between setting the goal and seeing meaningful results?

Long before I learned about change management, I studied the psychology of human behavior.  In my opinion, the missing link in our contemporary change models is failing to understand how patterns of predictable human behavior can either support or derail our efforts to improve organizational results.

Building effective change efforts does require a commitment from the top of the organization, a clear goal, excellent project leadership, etc.  However, three human behavior components are critical to achieving meaningful change.  We call it IAC. 

• I - Individual Performance Rules: Understand that individual performance determines organizational results. No amount of yelling or hours and hours of meetings will change organizational results. An organization’s results are an outcome of the collection of every individual’s performance. So, our goals have to be focused on improving each employee’s performance.

• A - Acknowledge Human Behavior: When employees are presented with a new goal, human behavior can be predicted. Stages will include: 
  • “What happened?
  • “Why?”
  • “What about me?”
  • “Who else should be involved?”
  • What about…..?”

Meaningful change only occurs when an employee comes into your office and says “What about adding Y to your X plan?  By doing so, I think we can improve upon the original idea.” At that point, they have fully embraced the change, they own it and they are productively supporting it.

The goal is to understand this human behavior process and get more of our employees to that point.  So, resist the temptation to yell “Shut up and go back to work” or “Just do it the way I said,” and help move them toward the “What about?” stage.  If you do so, their increased commitment, productivity and support for your goal will quickly result in meaningful change.

• C - Cement New Habits: So many of our well meaning efforts to drive meaningful change fail because they are not well implemented. New habits are not cemented into the fabric of the organization and the old habits choke off the new habits.

Part of the supporting the goal has to be a commitment to investing the resources necessary so that there is a return on investment.  If the new behaviors, skills and practices that will achieve results are not developed to the point that they become habit, we’ll end up with just one more flavor of the month program.

The process of managing change is simple and straightforward.  Implementing desired change successfully is the hard part.  Apply the IAC model and your success rate will improve. 

The Speed of Change

If we assume that all of the knowledge that mankind had accumulated by the year 1 AD equaled 1 unit of information, how long does it take to double that knowledge?  Keep in mind, this original 1 unit of knowledge includes Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Homer, etc.

According to Dr. Daniel Johnston, a Clinical Psychologist practicing in Macon, Georgia:

• The original 1 unit of knowledge took 1500 years to double
• The next doubling (2 units to 4 units) took only 250 years (1750 AD)
• The next doubling took 150 years (1900 AD)
• The doubling speed has now reached 1 - 2 years

We wonder why we have difficulty keeping up.