These are the five real and measurable costs of not managing transition effectively. Remember them the next time people tell you there isn’t time to worry about the reactions of your employees to the latest plan for change. And help such people to see that not managing transition is really a shortcut that costs much more than it saves. For it leaves behind an exhausted and demoralized workforce at the very time when everyone agrees that the only way to be successful is to get more effort and more creativity out of the organization’s employees……
Organisation
Perceptual Acuity : the ability to see, hear, or understand something easily
Retailers lacking perceptual acuity might, for example, have underestimated the significance of Apple’s bringing in Angela Ahrendts as senior vice president of retail and online stores in early 2014.
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Book Recommendation – Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull
“Steve Jobs—not a man inclined to hyperbole when asked about the qualities of others—once described Ed Catmull as ‘very wise,’ ‘very self-aware,’ ‘really thoughtful,’ ‘really, really smart,’ and possessing ‘quiet strength,’ all in a single interview. Any reader of Creativity, Inc., Catmull’s new book on the art of running creative companies, will have to agree. Catmull, president of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, has written what just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company
“It’s one thing to be creative; it’s entirely another—and much more rare—to build a great and creative culture. Over more than thirty years, Ed Catmull has developed methods to root out and destroy the barriers to creativity, to marry creativity to the pursuit of excellence, and, most impressive, to sustain a culture of disciplined creativity during setbacks and success. Pixar’s unrivaled record, and the joy its films have added to our lives, gives his method the most important validation: It works.”—Jim Collins, co-author of Built to Last and author of Good to Great
How much are we able to see? And how much is obscured from view?
In ancient Greek mythology, Apollo, god of poetry and prophecy, falls in love with the beautiful Cassandra, daughter of the king and queen of Troy, whose tangle of red hair and alabaster skin is famed throughout the land. He woos her by giving her a rare and treasured gift—the ability to see the future—and, in response, she agrees to be his consort.
Managing Complex Change
Innovation in and of itself has no value
Innovation in and of itself has no value. It creates value when it results in either sustainable competitive advantage for you, neutralization of a competitor’s competitive advantage, or increased productivity within the status quo. Continue reading
Smart Individuals Are No Longer Needed, Collective Intelligence Is
Retirement letter from Google’s CFO
Google chief financial officer Patrick Pichette announced his retirement in unusual fashion Tuesday. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
It’s common for corporate executives who are retiring to say they’ll be spending more time with their family. But Google’s chief financial officer, Patrick Pichette, appears to really mean it.
In an unusually reflective and candid letter posted Tuesday afternoon to Google Plus, Pichette wrote that “after nearly 7 years as CFO, I will be retiring from Google to spend more time with my family. Yeah, I know you’ve heard that line before. We give a lot to our jobs. I certainly did.” He said he wrote the letter because “I want to share my thought process because so many people struggle to strike the right balance between work and personal life.”
We need to think about failure differently
I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth…….
Hiring Great People
“I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way.”
– Lee Iacocca
“The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge in this area.”
– Bill Gates
“Some people can do one thing magnificently, like Michelangelo, and others make things like semiconductors or build 747 airplanes — that type of work requires legions of people. In order to do things well, that can’t be done by one person, you must find extraordinary people.”
– Steve Jobs
ONE TUSK 