PGS GrowthLines newsletter resources
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Newsletter Series: Dealing With Change
Challenges in today’s business environment often involve dealing with change. What isn’t widely known is that only about 33 percent of change initiatives are successful. This series of articles lays out the vital points of successful change implementation -- points that Bill Dann can vouch for after nearly 30 years of advising organizations of all sizes.
Series Issue #1: Putting Customer Data To Work
Remember, when you are undertaking fundamental change, you are bucking the odds. That is, consistent data from studies on change reveal that change initiatives fail two-thirds of the time. Our experience is that the underlying cause of this failure involves the human element: not getting people really on board; not making them comfortable.
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Series Issue #2: The Importance of Selling the Big "Why"
In my experience, the single greatest cause of failure in bringing about change is simply not getting followers or "doers" on board. It is a failure of leadership. End result? Too much frustration; too much time and money invested. Leadership winds up giving in, or tries to force the change, which means poor execution. Either way, the change fails.
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Series Issue #3: Define the Scope, Understand the Potential and Assess the Readiness
A significant contributor to the high failure rate for organizational change efforts in the U.S. is this: CEO’s lose patience, because of high costs, the unknown returns, and the slow pace of such projects. There are steps you can take, early on, that will reduce the time and cost, and thereby greatly improve the odds of success.
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Series Issue #4: Let Those Who Do The Work, Design The Work
The two major sources of failure in implementing change are not empowering those doing the work, and, not handling correctly the human side of change. Avoiding these failures requires eliminating the dominant tendency of American managers to empower managers, rather than the workforce, and responding to a lack of cooperation with authority, rather than with understanding.
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Series Issue #5: Make Sure Everybody Wins
Did you know that most attempts at process improvement fail? However, we have found that, with a well-designed and executed process improvement project, you can count on a result of 20 to 50 percent improvement.
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Series Issue #6: Secure and Maintain Stakeholder Support
Years ago, I read the seminal book, Corporate Lifecycles, by Ichak Adizes. It was my introduction to the theory known as CAPI (coalesced authority, power, and influence), which the author later told me, was the single most important element of his research.
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Series Issue #7: Keys To Innovation
There are likely a lot of reasons that only one-third of change efforts succeed. These are probably the two most significant:
- They aim too low. That is, they seek only incremental improvement, rather than real innovation. By real innovation, I mean the dictionary definition: the act of introducing something new or for the first time.
- Management decides it’s not worth it. Because change can be costly -- in terms of staff time, consultants, technology investment, and so forth, management often loses patience and drops the project when the improvements don’t seem to warrant the investment and disruptions involved.
Series Issue #8: The Importance of Data on Existing Performance
My experience is that most organizations have little or no data relating to the performance of vital processes. It’s like driving a car without a speedometer, or an oil pressure gauge. Rather, they tend to "know," by gut feel, that the process isn’t performing as it should. That, alone, often prompts them to seek help in making improvements.
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Series Issue #9: Clarify Problems Before Innovating
In the first article of this series on implementing change I stated, “We have never found a working group, no matter how small the organization, in which, if there are more than three people involved in using a process, there are not variations in how the work is done.” Uniformly, team members are surprised to see the variation. How can this be so?
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Series Issue #10: Finding Breakthrough Strategies
You won’t realize the 20-50% improvement in process performance if you aren’t successful at innovating (def. the act of introducing something new). Yes, you can get some improvement in performance simply by improving an existing process, i.e., eliminating duplication, rework, mistakes, unnecessary effort. However, although it is far more challenging, it is in re-inventing the current process that the real leaps in performance are found.
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Series Issue #11: Grabbing Hold of Low Hanging Fruit
Ok, we are close to the end of our newsletter series on change. If you have been following along with us through the steps thus far, you will have already completed the design of an innovative new process that will gain 20-50% improvement in performance, and your design team is excited to implement their creation. So, what could go wrong? The answer is
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Series Issue #12: Sound Implementation Planning
If you have read the previous articles in our series on change, you know that at this point in your change management initiative, you have gathered data, defined the new innovative process, and discussed some “low hanging fruit,” i.e., low cost, easy improvements. The next step then:
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Series Issue #13: The Human Side of Change
Today we take on the very real problem of people’s resistance to change, even change for the better. In our experience, the single greatest source of failed change efforts is failure to
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Series Issue #14: Management Support of Change
In this last article in our series on managing change, we address a curious irony: although
leadership calls for improved performance, they often
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Newsletter Series: Four Keys To Superior Company Performance
Series Issue #1: Introduction — Four Keys To Superior Company Performance
I have been analyzing companies and consulting with CEOs and other organizational executives
for 27 years. In that time, it has become extremely clear to me that when a company
makes real strides in becoming more productive, there are four factors present.
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Series Issue #2: Clear Focus — The First of Four Keys to Superior Company Performance
By clear focus, I’m talking about the explicit vision you must have of your company after your
goals have been achieved.
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Series Issue #3: Results! Not Reasons
When we go into companies to help them do strategic or project planning, we often follow in the
footsteps of other consultants. The clients tell us that our predecessor ran a good session; everyone
felt good but when it was over, but nothing changed. In other words, there were no results,
no real improvement, no changes.
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Series Issue #4: The third key: Continually-improving systems
W. Edwards Deming, in his book, Out of the Crisis, offered a ringing indictment of the American
management system. It (the current American management system) focuses on finding the right
people, rather than developing an optimal system, to support worker productivity.
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Series Issue #5: The Final Secret - Cooperation
Name a favorite championship sports team. What’s their secret to success?
Likely your answer is team chemistry. For example: Pittsburgh Steelers (bring
your lunch bucket); Philadelphia Phillies (dare you to find a superstar).
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Other Newsletter Resources
December 2011: The Power of Accountability
Over the past several years, I have enjoyed an increasing role as coach for a number of
executives. The work is rewarding because it is high leverage. That is, a small investment
of time by myself and the CEO has the potential to
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November 2011: The Role of Strategic Planning in Performance Management, Part II
In our September Growthlines, I examined the role of the strategic plan in effectively executing performance management. One component of the strategic plan warranted a closer look, so I have expanded on it in this month’s edition. That component?
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September 2011: The Role of Strategic Planning in Performance Management
In our May Growthlines, I defined performance management as making continual progress in positively impacting the key indicators of your business. Improving performance on key indicators requires
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August 2011: The Importance of Incentives
I realize last month I promised a newsletter on how to use your strategic plan as a tool to improve performance. However, a recent vacation to Europe afforded me the chance to experience management practices in other countries and examine their impact upon results. While those experiences and thoughts are still swimming fresh in my head, I wanted to Read more...
July 2011: Principles for a Strategic Planning Template
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, we are seeing a good deal of interest on our web-site regarding Read more...
June 2011: The Leader’s Contract with Followers
Those of you who have used our Vision Navigation® strategic planning system know that I often refer to the Vision Navigation® Chart as representing a contract between the CEO and the board. That is, the CEO commits to Read more...
May 2011: Overview of Performance Management
Performance management is one of the most frequently used Internet searches that finds its way to our web-site. So, I’d like to lay out our view on what it is, what the key elements are, and then give you Read more...
April 2011: When to Set Policy
My first management position was with a government agency, and I learned how setting too much policy stifles creativity, innovation, building of sound judgment and morale. It can Read more...
July 2009: Vector and Velocity
I’m thinking that any business that does not have the ability to get "outside the box" to re-design their methods, will not be competitive with one that does. It’s that simple. Let’s examine what’s behind the powerful impact that real process-improvement produces.
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May 2009: Why Dynamic Planning™
We call our approach to project development Dynamic Planning™. We call it that because it has
been our experience, through scores of projects over the last 25 years, that, for projects to be
successful, the planning and management approach must be dynamic in nature.
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April 2009: The Importance of Personal Planning
Strategic planning remains a subject of much controversy in
management literature. Probably the best treatise on this is Henry
Mintzberg’s The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. Most experts,
including Mintzberg, agree that planning is a must, but they question the
effectiveness and execution of many planning systems.
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