One week before the application you have been working on is to be delivered, your client asks you to make a small change to a drop down menu. He knows there isn't time to process the change through change management so he asks you to bypass it. You try to reason with him that a last minute change is a bad idea. But he insists the change is … [Read more...]
Short-Circuit Chaos?
Managers who like to be in control have a predictable reaction to their organization grappling with a change which creates chaos -- they want it to stop. When? Now, right now. What happens if management decides to short-circuit chaos with a magical solution? What happens if management accepts chaos as a necessary but uncomfortable period of the … [Read more...]
Waiting For People Who Arrive Late
What does it say about the participants of a weekly meeting when the meeting consistently starts 5-10 minutes behind schedule? Answer, the participants are cooperating with each other to start late. Starting late is the status quo. Let's explore: Are you cooperating with the participants of your meetings to start late? How do you … [Read more...]
Make Results Predictable
Your organization is in chaos. You want to create pockets of stability. What do you do? Make the results of meetings predictable. Winfrey is the manager of a geographically dispersed software development team at the XYZ Corp. Ellsworth, her manager, assigns Winfrey the management responsibility of hosting a biweekly training conference call. … [Read more...]
The Satir Change Model
Improvement is always possible. This conviction is the heart of the transformation system developed by family therapist Virginia Satir. Her system helps people improve their lives by transforming the way they see and express themselves. An element of the Satir System is a five-stage change model (see Figure 1) that describes the effects each stage … [Read more...]