By Jim Clemmer Leadership Development| Buy Books| Practical Leadership Blog

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PART ONE of TWO

"Unfortunately, it's the rare company that understands the importance of informal improvisation — let alone respects it as a legitimate business activity. In most cases, ideas generated by employees in the course of their work are lost to the organization as a whole. . . . This important source of organizational learning is either ignored or suppressed." — John Seely Brown, Research that Reinvents the Corporation

• So get out and poke around. Find out what's happening in all the nooks and crannies of your organization. Look for people and teams who are solving problems in creative new ways. Then, fulfill the critical leadership role Walt Disney was talking about when he said; "I am like a bee, buzzing from one part of Disney to another spreading the pollen of creativity and stimulation."
• Don't let consultants or staff professionals impose a top-down organization improvement plan on everyone. One size does not fit all. However, everybody can't go off doing their own thing. There needs to be some organization-wide coordination and consistency in your improvement effort. Another part of senior management's leadership role involves clarifying what is mandatory and what's optional in your change and improvement effort. The organization's destination and priorities shouldn't be optional. But the best route to get there should be open for exploration, customization — and local ownership (the most critical element of building commitment).
• One non-negotiable is that all improvement activities focus outward. All changes either serve an external customer or partner, serve somebody who is, or will lead to new markets and the filling of unmet needs. Changes that make internal life easier but reduce customer service, quality, or innovation aren't improvements. Current and potential customers and/or the partners serving them should be at the center of, or key members on, the local learning teams. They need to be "mucking around" to find new and improved ways of producing, delivering, or supporting the products and services.
• Demonstrations or pilot projects are powerful learning, change, and improvement tools. Opening a new plant, branch, division, or office is a great opportunity to set up a "greenfield site". This is where you can test new structures, tools, and techniques (such as self-managed teams or horizontal management).
• A highly effective leader can have twenty years of rich learning and experience. But many mediocre performers have one year of experience multiplied twenty times. The same learning disability afflicts organizations that haven't developed the systems and practices for transferring and communicating the rich learning that comes from local initiatives.
• You need an internal "best practices and good tries" system, clearinghouse, or network. You should have Intranet sites, frequent meetings, active voice or email systems, team visits, fairs, or other share and compare forums. Measurement systems and feedback loops should make the results every team is getting, highly visible and widely available to everyone. Your education, training, and communication activities should continuously keep people throughout your organization in touch with what's working

• An Educational Process for Change and Improvement Efforts
• Balancing Top-Down and Bottom-Up Change Processes
• Bolt-On Programs or Built-In Culture Change
• Change Checkpoints and Improvement Milestones
• Change Management Can Lead to Rigidity and Resistance to Change
• Improvement Planning for Taking Charge of Change
• Improvement Planning Infrastructure and Process
• Improvement Planning Pathways and Pitfalls (Part One)
• Improvement Planning Pathways and Pitfalls (Part Two)
• Mastering Change Through Continuous Growth, Learning, and Improvement
• Organizational Changes to Deal with Whirlwinds of Change
• Paradoxical Balancing Acts in Organization Improvement
• Stepping Back to Step Ahead Through Reviewing and Assessing
• Successful Change and Improvement Needs Balanced Improvement Planning
• Successful Change Flows from Learning, Growth, and Development
• The Law of Improvement Displacement
• The Tyranny of the Urgent Can Cause Priority Overload
• Use Strategic Imperatives to Set Improvement Priorities
• Why Most Training Fails
• Why Most Change Programs and Improvement Initiatives Fail