Want some Change ? Be Disruptive !

Some managers believe there is no way to guide the innovation journey, because innovation is just random and unpredictable. If innovation is indeed a black box, the best company can do is let a thousand flowers bloom, in the hope that one of them sprouts into a substantial growth business. This is a bit like releasing thousands of monkeys into a room full of word processor end hoping they will produce Shakespeare….

Disruptive ideas provide management alternatives that, if spread, can completely transform the way the organisation works without the need for a massive ‘change management programme’. Each of them in its own right has the potential to create significant change, but the compound benefit of a few of them is a real engine of change and business transformation.

Disruptive Ideas:

• are simple
  
• have a total disproportion between their simplicity and the significant impact in the life of organizations


• can be implemented now


• have zero cost or are cheap to implement


• are most likely to be contrarian


• are most likely to be counterintuitive
  
• have a high risk of being trivialised or dismissed


• can spread virally very easily, as soon as some people implement them

As a conclusion, I would add the following principle : Good Enough can be Great ! Disruptors win by playing the innovation game differently. Disruption are all about trade-offs…. Think about it !

Sources :
- Leandro Herrero, 2008
- Innovator’s Guide to Growth, Putting Disruptive Innovation to work (ScottD. Anthony, Mark W. Jonhson, Josef V. Sinfield, Elisabeth J. Altman)

- Image Flickr, seretuaccidente

Change: managing the process

Because Change is inevitable and unpredictable in its consequences doesn’t mean that it can’t be manage as a process.
These are the stages in managing change:

1. Tell them why: Change is better accepted when people are given a compelling business reason.

2. Make it manageable: Even when people accept what needs to be done, change may just be too big for anyone to handle. Breaking it down into manageable bits can help overcome this.

3. Take a shared approach: involve people early, asking them to join you in managing change.

4. Reward success early: flag up successes as quicly as possible. Don’t wait for year-end or the appraisal cycle.

5. Expect resistance

6. Recognize that change takes longer than expected. Remember the 6 stages that people go through when experiencing change and hence the process takes so long. The stages are: immobilization or shock, disbelief, depression, acceptance of reality, testing out the new situation, rationalizing why it’s happening and then final acceptance.

But above all : Enjoy changes !

Top talents? High PO? Are companies mistaken?

Target talent at all levels

Following my MBA course this week, I have worked on market segmentation. Well, I am convinced that Talents should also be segmented.

Organizations can’t afford to neglect the contributions of other employees. Several authors in recent years have emphasized the valuable contributions of B players: capable, steady performers who make up the majority of any workforce. Research on social capital has also highlighted the importance of inclusiveness: top talent is more effective when it operates in vibrant internal networks with a range of employees. Performance suffers when such social networks are absent or withdrawn. Our experience has even shown that strong networks help retain young Gen Y professionals.

Companies must therefore address the needs of talent at all levels of the organization: frontline staff, technical specialists, even the indirect workforce, such as people who work for suppliers, contractors, and joint-venture partners—are often as critical to overall success as A players. Experience suggests that an exclusive focus on top players can damage the morale of the rest of the organization and, as a result, overall performance.

**A more inclusive approach involves thinking of the workforce as a collection of talent segments that actively create or apply knowledge.**

Image:

http://www.counterpoint-music.com/specialties/images/talentshow.jpg

Keep your staff mobilized… Some good ideas found on the web….

- Show your people that you have a plan.
- Communicate face to face.
- Involve your people.
- Show your compassion.
- Redefine success.
- Offer recognition.
- Keep on celebrating. Applaud every small success.

Do say: 'We will be honest and open with our people, and show them the way forward, but we will also be realistic about our prospects during this downturn.'
Don't say: 'We're all doomed.'

Image Flickr

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

Mark Twain

Talent is Worthless, Performance is Priceless

How Do Star Performers Work?

The key to converting average or mediocre people to star status lies, first, in determining their competencies and, second, in coaching them in the application of those competencies. The Bell Lab study identified nine strategies star performers use to get their work done.

They are as follows:

• Taking initiative: Star performers don't just inform someone of an error, they correct the error. The mediocre don't.


• Networking: Star performers anticipate their needs and solicit outside input prior to beginning a project. The mediocre wait until there's a need and then look for help.


• Self-management: Stars know that self-management goes beyond time management and includes management of effort and knowledge. The mediocre feel time management is all that's needed.


• Teamwork effectiveness: Star performers are comfortable being followers or leaders. The mediocre tend to push too hard for leadership roles.


• Leadership: Star performers know small leadership roles are as important as bigger, more visible ones. The mediocre often are disappointed with smaller, less viable leadership assignments and, as a result, perform at a level expressing their displeasure.


• Followership: Star performers are aware of the value of following, as well as leading, and understand the need to contribute to the leader and the team's performance. The mediocre often are difficult in a team setting and more focused on getting individual credit.


• Perspective: Superior performers understand how their immediate work fits into the "big picture." The star performer is invested in taking on other viewpoints, such as those of the customer, manager or other team members. The mediocre often see a world defined by the length of their reach. They tend to have difficulty accepting others' thoughts and ideas.


• Show-and-tell: Star performers are master presenters. The mediocre are PowerPoint specialists.


• Organizational savvy: Star performers understand how they contribute to the overall performance of the organization and are capable of navigating through an organization's competing interests. The mediocre often are perplexed with organization politics and hide behind the mantra of not being a "political person."

Understanding these strategies and defining them for the workforce is a powerful tool and is necessary to convert mediocre workers into star performers. It is not easy, but it is worth it. In these difficult times, adding the equivalent of seven average performers to the workforce by converting just one to star status is a strategy that addresses the pressing need to do more with less.

Image Flickr

When job seekers invade Facebook

The increasing popularity of online social networking is changing not only the way people manage their careers but social networking itself.

As the downturn continues, millions of corporate managers are rushing to join online social networks in a scramble to build their social capital. The popularity of sites such as LinkedIn is soaring: less than a year ago the site had little brand profile and was seen mostly as a venue for corporate suits trolling for professional contacts while plotting their next career move. Facebook, by contrast, has largely attracted individuals seeking a compelling site for fun social networking.
Today LinkedIn’s year-on-year growth is up nearly 200 percent in the United States and it now has more than 35 million members—many of whom were formerly employed within the hard-hit financial sector. And it’s just one of the many sites to which recession-struck managers are flocking…

This surging popularity of online social networking is transforming the nature of business networking, with profound implications for the way business people manage their careers. But it also augurs profound change for social networking itself.

With so many people stampeding into Web-based social networks, the line between social and business networking is becoming increasingly blurred. An important question is whether the values and codes of conduct specific to the virtual world will come into conflict with real-world values and norms. Facebook, where the idea of a “friend” is directly embedded in the interface, is increasingly cluttered with self-promoters, career artists, and marketing entrepreneurs.

What happens as this trend intensifies and those using Facebook exclusively for career networking invade ?

There are, of course, powerful economic reasons behind the trend. As sociologist Nan Lin puts it in his book, Social Capital,1 “Individuals engage in interactions and networking in order to produce profits.” These profits are based upon information, influence, social credentials, and recognition. The accumulated social capital, meanwhile, helps individuals to gain competitive advantages in the labor market as a result of privileged access to “resources” located on the social networks.

It’s a safe bet that if the economic downturn grinds on, we will witness further conflict between the nonrational instinct to connect socially and the rational calculation to build social capital for professional reasons. If so, it may put further strain on the notion of an online friend. We may find ourselves asking more frequently that age-old question, “What are friends for?”

About the Authors
Professor Soumitra Dutta is the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology at INSEAD, where Dr. Matthew Fraser is a senior research fellow. Their book, Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Change Your Life, Work and World, was published by Wiley in December 2008.

Making talent a strategic priority

Companies like to promote the idea that employees are their biggest source of competitive advantage. Yet the astonishing reality is that most of them are as unprepared for the challenge of finding, motivating, and retaining capable workers as they were a decade ago.

Too many organizations still dismiss talent management as a short-term, tactical problem rather than an integral part of a long-term business strategy, requiring the attention of top-level management and substantial resources. Everyone spends time on today’s business—and attribute very little value to doing anything else.

Senior executives frequently acknowledge their failure (and that of their line managers) to pay enough attention to these issues. Researches have highlighted the obstacles that executives face, including short-term mind-sets, minimal collaboration and talent sharing among business units, ineffective line management, and confusion about the role of HR professionals (Exhibit 1).

To manage talent successfully, executives must recognize that their talent strategies cannot focus solely on the top performers; that different things make people of different genders, ages, and nationalities want to work for (and remain at) a company; and that HR requires additional capabilities and encouragement to develop effective solutions. Only in this way will talent management establish itself at the heart of business strategy.

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Albert

Driving radical change

Transforming an organization requires clearly articulated aspirations, as well as the ability to generate energy and new ideas.

Ideas
The power of the big idea is implicit in the aspiration. Less well appreciated is the way each theme and the initiatives underlying it depend on a flow of good ideas. Leaders should guard against common pitfalls. The first is the common misapprehension that generating ideas is an esoteric art requiring unusual levels of personal creativity or the teachings of the latest innovation guru.
Another misapprehension is the willingness to be satisfied with ideas that are merely good enough, which cannot be energizing, because such ideas don’t stretch an organization and its people. Established orthodoxies must be broken and innovation encouraged, so don’t let unconventional ideas fall victim to hierarchy, bureaucracy, or silos (or all three).
Leaders can avoid these traps by clarifying their expectations right from the start and reinforcing those expectations throughout the transformation. They should emphasize that practical, small-scale solutions can be as useful as big, groundbreaking ideas and take care to provide guidance on what needs improving and where orthodoxy and conventional thinking are best challenged.

Four types of ideas are particularly important:

Why change? In a turnaround, the overall reason for a transformation is usually obvious. But leaders trying to, say, globalize an already profitable company need to explain carefully what they want to achieve. Ideas for articulating the “why” are essential—both for the overall transformation and for a small part of its implementation, such as a local alteration to the work flow of a single product line.

What to change? Leaders must encourage the organization to take a hard look at which functions, geographies, or product lines to change. Which processes need streamlining? What aspects of operations are outdated? What new market opportunities can be tapped? Project teams will inspire new ideas by drawing on people from different, and seemingly unrelated, parts of the organization.

Whom to change? Transformations are about changing not only things but also people. Leaders must identify key roles that will have to be adapted to support the objectives of the transformation. In addition, they must select teams of change agents to drive it at all levels of the organization. Crucially, they need to agree on how they will change themselves to “live the change.”

How to change? Practical and specific solutions that demonstrate how to reach financial or operational targets are especially valuable. Will reducing waste by installing a new process help to achieve the goal for a particular plant, for example, or should the shop floor be reconfigured? Ideas on the processes for instilling change and building new skills and on fresh ways to engage people are always needed as well.

Wise leaders establish disciplined processes for generating and developing ideas. The first phase of every initiative, for instance, should allow time and space for creativity. Incentives should encourage people not only to come up with ideas but also to share them widely.

The McKinsey Quarterly, the business journal of McKinsey & Company.

Harnessing the power of informal employee networks

Formalizing a company’s ad hoc peer groups can spur collaboration and unlock value

Personal social networks, both within and outside of companies, increase the value of collaboration by reducing the search and coordination costs of connecting parties who have related knowledge and interests. They don’t necessarily fit into the organizational chart. Consider the case of an energy company staffer we call Cole (Exhibit 1). Although he sits relatively far down in the formal company structure, he acts as the hub in an informal network because he has knowledge that others find valuable. Without him, the production group would be cut off from the rest of the organization. His boss Jones, the unit’s senior vice president, is connected in the informal network to only two people, both in exploration.

This is increasingly typical in today’s large, sprawling corporations. Informal networks, slipping through the back channels, cross the lines of geography, products, customer groups, and functions—where the action is—and even through the thick silo walls of vertically oriented organizations.

Why Millennials Matter to You

Sure, you’re going to need millennials simply to put butts in seats, but ...

...But these workers are also change agents who may force you to rethink and improve your methods of recruiting, training, and management — the lifeblood elements of your company. They’re accustomed to working away from their desks, using everything from library computers to smartphones and laptops. They got intense and individualized mentoring from teachers and coaches, and they were never told that their elders should intimidate them. “The world is a flat hierarchy to these kids,” says Peter Johnson, director of admissions at the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “Whether you think it’s a good or bad thing doesn’t really matter. It’s a market condition.”
Many companies have realized they need to change with the times: UPS has begun to abandon its training manuals for hands-on learning in staged neighborhoods; Deloitte empowers its middle managers to offer flexible scheduling to their team members, and Google bypasses corporate hierarchy by making its brightest new millennials managers and granting them direct access to the company’s co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Upgrading talent

A downturn can give smart companies a chance to upgrade their talent.

Downturns place companies’ talent strategies at risk. As deteriorating performance forces increasingly aggressive head count reductions, it’s easy to lose valuable contributors inadvertently, damage morale or the company’s external reputation among potential employees, or drop the ball on important training and staff-development programs.

But there is a better way. By emphasizing talent in cost-cutting efforts, employers can intelligently strengthen the value proposition they offer current and potential employees and position themselves strongly for growth when economic conditions improve.

Companies can maintain their attractiveness to internal and external talent by using cost-cutting efforts as an opportunity to redesign jobs so that they become more engaging for the people undertaking them. A job’s level of responsibility, degree of autonomy, and span of control all contribute to employee satisfaction. Head count reductions provide a powerful incentive to use existing resources better by breaking down silos and increasing the span of control for challenging managerial roles—thus improving the odds of engaging key talent in the redesigned jobs.

Matthew Guthridge, John R. McPherson, and William J. Wolf The McKinsey Quarterly is the business journal of McKinsey & Company.

The Economist again.. so accurate!! :-)

Downsizing Survivors: Motivating the Employees Who Remain After Layoffs

You can't open a newspaper or visit a news website without seeing notices of corporate layoffs. And layoffs create downsizing survivors, the people who remain in your company after the downsizing.

No matter your circumstances, you all have something in common during and after downsizing - layoff survivors, those “could be,” “should be,” lucky employees who made the cut during the layoffs and downsizing.Most organizations invest their efforts in helping the downsized employees move on. This is ethical, reasonable and positive. Plus, your survivors are watching.

To truly benefit from the layoffs and downsizing, however, you need to invest even more energy in the people who remain after downsizing and layoffs. You will aid recovery; fuel productivity; boost morale, despite the loss; and minimize the damage to workplace trust.

Demonstrate That You Value the Layoff Survivors After a Downsizing

If you are a manager, it is most important to reassure the people who report to you of their value to you and the organization. You need to talk with each of them individually to let them know why and how they are valued; tell them what you feel they contribute to your effective, continuously improving work environment. No matter how reassuring you or your executive leadership have been, believe me, on some level, after layoffs, trust has been injured. Employees need reassurance about their security.

They need reassurance about why the people who were let go in the downsizing were chosen. They need reassurance about their future….

What is love?

Dec 17th 2008 From Economist.com
Google offers some insights into life's big questions

The oldest questions are still the most puzzling. According to Google's annual list of popular search terms, even in these times of economic crisis, people are most concerned with working out what love is. The nature of gout, an ailment most commonly associated with gentlemanly excess, has fallen off the list since 2007. With fewer expensive meals and bottles of wine on offer, it is likely to be less of a problem in these frugal times. Interest in the identity of the president-elect, Barack Obama, reached such a fever pitch that he has replaced God on the list. John McCain could perhaps take comfort from the fact that more interest was shown in him than in his running mate, Sarah Palin.

Time to pass the Torch...

Reading The Economist this morning...and just want to share this excellent drawing with you...Time to pass the Torch...

I will no make any comment on this one :-)

KAL's cartoon
Dec 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Happy Darwinian 2009 !

All my best wishes for 2009.
Appropriately enough, for a blog launching at the start of this year, it is the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s publication of Origin of the Species. A good reminder in these turbulent times that human life can be boiled down to a couple of basic essentials: survival and reproduction, as The Economist reminds us in its Christmas Issue.
Many companies and managers will be focusing on the first in 2009. I would suggest that history will remember those who keep their sights firmly focused on the second. There are already two reactions apparent in reaction to the crisis.
One is to hunker down, tighten all the screws, and reduce the team to the core individuals who have delivered past successes – then wait to see what happens before moving. The other is to use this opportunity to make massive, profound or innovative changes, adaptations and investments to ready for a new century, new rules and new realities.
I hope we are ambitious for more than just survival... Well speaking about me, it is a big Yes...

Happy Darwinian 2009!