Overview: Change & Project Management

Blog posts take hours to write, those great images need to be found or created and those social networks need to be managed and nurtured. It is often not done or persisted with because there are no apparent quick rewards. This is where the tortoise can beat the hare by slow persistence. It is a marathon and a journey not a sprint... you are bui…

If a 100 new alluring little foxy ideas, insights and observations hit you every week, and can pick out the 1 that is worth responding to, you're a foxhog... the foxhog can live in a highly uncertain environment, and be responsively engaged within it, yet create a high-certainty execution context... This ability to turn uncertainty into cer…

true digital transformation requires the courage to challenge entrenched beliefs within one’s organization. .. Digital transformation is probably about as big a deal as the invention of credit. It changes the way we do everything. - Digital Transformation: Becoming a ‘Forgetting Organization’ (Wharton)

Social Media had its place in marketing during the early days, but as platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest) have evolved brands/businesses have lost their ability to stand out... social media is a channel to connect with and provide value to your existing users...should be the responsibility of a cross functional team member who wo…

This should be an exciting time. After all this is what we have wanted for so long. But it could prove dangerous if we do not handle it well... Instead of getting strong, clear direction about becoming digital first there is a vague vision... One danger is that the digital first vision fades before it can take root.... The second danger is it g…

One reason for peaking turns out to be success. Success means more employees, more meetings and more compromise. Success means more pressure to expand the market base and to broaden the appeal to get there. Success means that stubborn visionaries are pushed aside by profit-maximizing managers. - Seth's Blog: Peak Mac

In this week’s edition, two new social media products in one week; a few good longreads for the weekend; and more stuff for your online toolbox.

Huge longform exposé - don't know whether to be impressed, amused or horrified: "... what did it mean for an online retailer with annual sales of more than $1 billion, that fills 280,000 orders per week, to be “self-organized”?... Holacracy is ... just one example of a growing movement... that seeks to apply insights derived from evolutionar…

People don’t leave companies. They leave managers — it’s their number one reason to leave... Modern business structures are built on a fundamental system of mistrust, division, and antagonism I call LCD management — managing to the lowest common denominator... companies of all sizes, in every industry, have operated without managers for decades…

There is a growing consensus among top executives that gender diversity is both an ethical and a business imperative. Yet progress is painfully slow... we have committed publicly, through the United Nations’ HeForShe initiative and the 30% Club,3 to some ambitious gender goals for our firm over the next five years—ones that won’t be trivial to …

what many of these movements’ followers share is the desire not just to disagree with their opponents, but to delegitimize, dehumanize, and ostracize those with whom they disagree... It is not their policies that these new populists share, but their emphasis on a new kind of identity politics... What would previously have been isolated cases o…

A great manager is someone that pushes you to fulfill your own potential. What you if you could do that for yourself? ... ... develop a strong understanding of your areas for growth and regularly invite ... feedback on your work? Would your team mates be willing to hold you accountable ... What if you invited coworkers to surface tensions direc…

second-generation gender biases are ‘work cultures and practices that appear neutral and natural on their face,’ yet they reflect masculine values and life situations of men... Does your organization exhibit second-generation bias? The following three factors signal that this may be the case. - Here’s Why You Can’t Attract, Develop and Retai…

the most effective transformation initiatives draw upon four key actions to change mind-sets and behaviors... role modeling, fostering understanding and conviction, reinforcing changes through formal mechanisms, and developing talent and skills.... successful transformations are nearly eight times more likely to use all four actions than to us…

The absence of hierarchy does not necessarily mean no structure. - Holacracy vs. Hierarchy vs. Flat Orgs — Holacracy — Medium

Companies where leaders don't empower their teams are like merry-go-rounds: plenty of movement, but stuck in place. One of my biggest failures as a leader came just as I thought I was excelling. I judged my worth based on how many decisions I was involved in, how many meetings I sat in on, and how people checked with me first for approval. On t…

The Old Work organises labour as a factory model of work... focused on fixing the bad stuff and continuous improvement (of the old stuff)... the New Work looks to bring everyone together in a living Community to discover, reconfigure and make new combinations of strengths to innovate. They look to discover through stories the deepest level of e…

The framework probably needs some explanation, and I intend to both refine and provide more detailed explanations of the framework in the near future. In the meantime, here is our Beta v1 of The Future of Work framework. - Launching new framework: The Future of Work - Trends in the Living NetworksTrends in the Living Networks

Self-management builds on the foundation of transparency. I don't think self-management works without being transparent ... we're now moving to a model where small teams own specific areas, and people don't need to worry about fixing and contributing to each and every problem in the company... the more self-managed you are as a company the m…

By generating enough internal force with our habits, we can push back against the external pressures that threaten to crush us. Here are a few to get started with ... - Survive the Hard Things with Habits — Better Humans — Medium

Gallup discovered 82% of hiring processes didn't pick the person with the right talent ... Add the wrong person into your employee mix ... and you could be looking at the cause of 80% of your turnovers. - 4 questions managers ask to better compare equally qualified candidates

"A large part of corporate economic activity today is still designed to accomplish what high market transaction costs prevented earlier. But the world has changed... coordination can be performed without intermediaries with the help of new technologies. Digital transparency makes responsive coordination possible... Apps can now do what manag…

"nobody tells you anything when it comes to bubbling-up abuse from the trenches. It’s completely unrealistic to expect someone five levels deep in the bowels of the organization to reach out to the fifth-richest man in the world and trouble him ... It doesn’t matter how many invitations to open doors... you extend, it’s just not going to happen. …

"what people really want is to be treated like individuals and given the tools to help themselves.... Rigour is the cold, hard fact of insight. Magic is the creative talent ... Without great insight, creative may be ill-informed or poorly targeted.... Meanwhile, a data-based body of evidence that isn’t supported by creativity fails to creat…

We must be dreamers, rebels, renegades, heretics, outlaws. Everything, in short, that the demagogues do not want us to be... the very leaders that are a broken, hunted, anxious world is so desperately missing. - How Not to Be a Leader — Bad Words — Medium

"This is not just about great user interface design but real end-to-end digital [services]... Some things have not been smooth, not all the exemplars have been a resounding success, however Mike took the challenge, dared to be measured and held accountable and the results have certainly been positive and to the betterment of the public purse." …

“The only way you can keep great employees in the company is by treating them like great employees.... Here are five truly idiotic HR policies that will keep your best employees racing for the exits the minute they get the chance — and keep you re-filling the same positions over and over:" Five Stupid Rules That Drive Great Employees Away, F…

So I’ve been building a little calculator that is a bit more user friendly than my Google spreadsheet. - Calculating the production of high-quality content - GatherContent: A blog about content strategy and development

The 2015 Digital Business Global Executive Study and Research Project by MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte identifies strategy, not technology, as the key driver of success in the digital arena. Conservative companies that avoid risk-taking are unlikely to thrive - and they'll also lose talent ... The ability to digitally reimagine the b…

Another advocacy piece on holacracy, because "Getting rid of hierarchies might just save the human race" - You Don’t Need a Manager — Work: Reimagined — Medium