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Archive for the ‘company culture’ Category

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Re-energize and Passion-up: When Good Female (and Male) Managers Want Out

Friday, October 9th, 2009

By Rick Grbavac

Smart women in management make companies stronger and keeping them requires concentrated programs. This comes from the research that economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett performed in preparing her newest book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down. In tough times, “high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men – 84 percent compared with 40 percent – to be seriously thinking” of leaving their companies.

In her article “Are Your Best Female Employees a Flight Risk?” Hewlett asserts that women were not thinking about leaving to spend more time with their families but, rather, because “they no longer felt challenged by or passionate about their work.” So companies such as Intel and Johnson and Johnson have created programs to address issues directly related to their senior management women. 

The idea in the article that jumped out at me was the idea of women managers losing their passion. I don’t think that this is a problem only for women executives. All knowledge workers from time to time need to re-energize and passion-up. The lull in business activity over the past year weighs heavily on all of us. It is time to re-vision, energize yourself and passion-up for this economic recovery.

Posted in best practices, company culture, employee retention, employee turnover, knowledge workers, management consulting, organizational culture | No Comments »

Transformative Change’s “Ah-ha!” Moment

Monday, September 28th, 2009

By William Seidman

In setting a goal of transformative organizational change, management typically goes out and presents sweeping images of the future, which people tend to regard as meaningful but distant. We continue to work toward these changes until, finally, there’s a moment when it isn’t so distant: the transformation is  palpable or, even, visible.

Then there’s that moment when each person knows the change is real — and it really hits them.

This has happened to me twice in the last few weeks. A service person was going along fine until she hit an “avoid” section of her old program that told her that a key aspect of her program was being obsoleted.

She just froze. She couldn’t believe it.

The other was a senior manager who was reviewing the summary portion of our persuasive technology. When he got to the portion that would be summarized to him, he realized that this was for real. He was going to be holding others accountable for a significant change, but he was going to be accountable, too.

For both of them, there was a moment of terror.

Ultimately, this was good because the terror happened in safe environment and could be worked out.

But the moment of the realization was very clear and specific and not always completely comfortable. It’s an important part of the process and something we prepare for and support.

Posted in business, company culture, getting change to "stick", management consulting, organizational change, training | No Comments »

From Transactional to Transformational: Teaching People to Think Big

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

By William Seidman

I’ve been working  on trying to make a transformation inside two organizations that are focused on the transactional.  In fact, they’ve been completely transactional: driven by tactical, daily transactions – daily orders, daily service requests. They quite literally have been pedaling as fast as they can.

One is a sales organization, the other is a service organization. Each would like to change its culture to one that emphasizes sustained client relationships.  

Organizational psychologist Ron Riggio‘s distinction between the transactional and the transformational applies to organizations, too.

The direct customer contact people like the idea of becoming transformational because transformational jobs are much more interesting than transactional jobs.. The managers are having a hard time; most became managers because they were better at transactions than their peers.

Now they are being asked to lead a transformation – and they don’t know what to do; they keep trying to convert things back to transactions, which block the change to a transformational environment.

Our challenge is to help transactional people to become transformational people, because only then can lasting change occur.

Posted in best practices, company culture, getting change to "stick", management consulting, organizational change, personal change | No Comments »

Inspired and Energized by Positive Deviants

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

By William Seidman

“Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges.”  — The Positive Deviance Initiative

It’s such a pleasure to work with positive deviants: they have energy and great ideas, and are consistently positive about themselves, their clients, and their company. It’s an energetic optimism stemming not from a Pollyanna view, but from intelligence, creativity,  and clear thinking.

Someone then asked me how positive deviants effect change in an organization:

* Their positive energy excites others
* Their customer-focus makes others more client-centric
* Their efficiency at managing their work sets a great example
* Their experiences in becoming so great are a path for others

Positive deviants really are the best resource for companies who want to improve. Are you listening to yours?

Posted in best practices, company culture, organizational assessments, organizational change, organizational culture | No Comments »

More on Organizational Change: Attitude Really IS Everything

Monday, August 17th, 2009

By Rick Grbavac

Bringing about – and sustaining – change to any organization requires a series of shifts in thinking and behavior. It also requires people who have great attitudes. There’s little point in wasting time and money – and the goodwill of the people who are on board – trying to convince, cajole, or convert people with attitude problems.

David Fox, Chairman & Chief Executive at PP Business Improvement, part of Power Panels Electrical Systems Ltd, puts it like this:

  • If a business wants to continuously improve its performance and productivity, it needs to start by recruiting the right people with the right attitude.
  • Traditional training is not the answer.
  • Training should not be considered a cost but an investment.
  • The attitudes and values need to be embraced by the entire enterprise, not just isolated pockets of individuals.
  • You can’t simply throw lots of money at improving business performance without first dealing with the people issues.

There’s really no better way to express it. Attitude IS everything!

Posted in best practices, business, company culture, getting change to "stick", leadership, management consulting, organizational change, organizational culture, training | No Comments »

Sustaining Change When Your Managers and Supervisors are Pedaling as Fast as They Can

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

 By William Seidman

Sustaining a change to a large organization can be difficult.

At Cerebyte we’ve made great progress in getting the end-user (the sales person, service person, etc.) to buy into and want the change. The problems arise with immediate and second-level supervisors. Without their active support, changes can’t “stick.” So what’s their problem? I see two factors:

1.  Managers are so focused on keeping the business running that looking ahead at the several weeks — or, more often,  the several months — often required for a substantive change is not something they do.  Nearly all of their resources, and most of the resources they supervise,  are just about daily survival.

2. They’re usually untrained in balancing the demands of running the business each day with developing their organization for the future.

Change initiatives only rarely survive these persistent obstacles.

Posted in Middle management, company culture, getting change to "stick", management consulting, organizational change | No Comments »

Great Branding and Company Culture

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

By William Seidman

I’ve been talking with  people who are experts in branding. I asked them how far into the operations of the organization they went.

When Cerebyte was working with Jack in the Box,  the company leaders saw the brand as being present in everything they did, even the facial expressions of the counter person handing over food to customers. Great branding involves so much more than great image-making and good advertising! It must be interwoven into the entire organization – the entity we call “company culture.”

The same ideas are discussed here . You can’t just create a brand without having the organizational culture/ the company culture to match and, ultimately, it is the culture that creates the true brand, not advertising

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Posted in best practices, company culture, management consulting, organizational culture | No Comments »

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