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Tagged with 'culture change'

Three Core Questions to Start Your New Year

Happy New Year!! May this be your best one yet! The start of a new year is an excellent time to renew and refocus ourselves, our teams, and our organizations. It’s an essential part of centering or grounding ourselves. In The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age, John […]

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Culture Transformation for Thriving in Permanent White Water

I was just talking with a CEO Client about the development work we’ve been doing with his team. This led to a discussion about the state of our businesses. His company is doing fairly well during these uncertain times. He asked about our business. I told him that we saw many organizations cut back sharply […]

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Is Your Culture by Default or by Design?

We’re continuing to get feedback, questions, and comments about culture development following my 60 minute webcast on November 4. If you missed the whirlwind “city bus tour,” you can view the archived presentation (my animated slides synchronized with the audio track) at Leading a Peak Performance Culture. One viewer sent me a good question after […]

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Leading a Peak Performance Culture Archived Webcast Now Available

Last Friday (November 4) I delivered a very fast paced and information packed 60 minute presentation by webcast. My goal was “culture change in an hour!” I tried to stuff the major learning from our thirty years of working with hundreds of organizations and the latest research on culture change into 60 minutes. We had […]

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Points to Ponder on Being an Acorn or Decaying Sheep

This month’s November illustration shows pigs feeding on an autumn harvest of acorns. This medieval European scene continues today in large oak groves of Spain and Portugal. A 14th century English proverb states, November, from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry “Large streams from little foundations flow and tall oaks from little acorns […]

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Thoughts that Make You Go Hmmm on…. Leading Culture Change

Here are especially vital findings and powerful observations about just what it takes to build a peak performance culture. These are drawn from Harvard Business School professor, James Heskett’s new book, The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force That Transforms Performance: “Culture really matters. As Lou Gerstner wrote, reflecting on his experiences in […]

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Book Review of “The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force that Transforms Performance”

John Kotter and James Heskett’s classic book, Corporate Culture and Performance, is an organization development classic. The book provided solid evidence of the payoffs that come from adaptive cultures and the negative power of unadaptive cultures. Adaptability is absolutely critical today. As change tsunamis relentlessly sweep the globe, adaptive organizations are getting stronger and unadaptive […]

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Fatal Five Failure Factors of Culture Change Efforts

Author and futurist Alvin Toffler’s powerful phrase “hinge of history” is an apt descriptor for our times. Our highly integrated global village is going through huge and massive shifts. We’re now in the midst of a major pivot point. The “Shift Happens“video (my last post) vividly illustrates these dramatic and accelerating changes. History teaches that […]

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“Shift Happens” Video Ignites Discussion on How We Need to Change or We’ll be Changed

Last week I ran a highly customized Peak Performance Leadership workshop and facilitated a strategy session in beautiful Colorado Springs. It was the perfect place to discuss climbing to higher levels of personal, team, and organization performance — especially during these fast changing and turbulent times. We also got to experience their first heavy snowfall […]

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A Time of Permanence and Change

The American author, poet, and psychologist, Bonaro W. Overstreet observed “October is a symphony of permanence and change.” Isn’t that so true of life? It’s certainly the paradoxical balance seen in strong leaders and found in peak performance cultures. This month in the northern hemisphere trees put on a colorful display as they prepare for […]

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Failed Culture Change Causes Failed IT Projects

Many organizations are implementing significant overhauls of their IT systems. But many of these projects are poorly implemented. This leads to sizeable cost overruns, missed deadlines, disrupted operations, unhappy customers, and stressed out employees. This month’s issue of Harvard Business Review carries an article entitled Why Your IT Project May Be Riskier Than You Think. […]

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Native American Folktale Illustrates the Power of Expectations

I don’t recall how this Native American fable ended up in my database: A native brave came upon an eagle’s egg which had somehow fallen unbroken from an eagle’s nest. Unable to find the nest, the brave put the egg in the nest of a prairie chicken where it was hatched by the brooding mother […]

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Core Elements to Leading a Peak Performance Culture

Organizational culture development is a complex topic with many intertwined leadership components. Establishing a peak performance culture in what’s sometimes called a “green field” situation has different challenges than changing an established culture (sometimes called “brown field”). In response to my July blog, RIM/Blackberry is at a Critical Leadership Crossroad, a subscriber sent me this […]

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Unconscious and Underlying Beliefs Undermine Culture Change Efforts

Culture change continues to be a hot topic because it’s vital to successfully implementing change and improvement efforts. It’s one of the key factors in the 50 – 70% failure rate for programs to increase safety performance, service and quality levels, Lean/Six Sigma, productivity, innovation, leadership skills. As I prepare for a series of webcasts, […]

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Are You a Servant Leader? Whom Do You Serve?

Recent Client work with culture change, service/quality improvement, safety, and leadership development has led to discussions of values, intentions, and drivers of behavior change. Do you see people as “human assets” to be “motivated” toward your goals? Do you strive for a win/win alignment of helping people get what they want from work while the […]

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Avoid These Traps and LOL for Peak Performance

I recently came across this bit of wisdom from an unknown author, “Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold — but so does a hard-boiled egg.”  Way too many managers confuse intentions, plans, and declarations with actions. Managers must LOL — lead out loud […]

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Major Global Study Calls for a Leadership Revolution

The training firm Development Dimensions International (DDI) has just released their Global Leadership Forecast 2011. It’s billed as “the biggest study of its kind, involving over 2,600 organizations in 74 countries. Nearly 1,900 HR professionals and 12,500 leaders participated.” This is the sixth biannual forecast they’ve completed since 1999. The forecast conclusions are very useful […]

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RIM/Blackberry is at a Critical Leadership Crossroad

The company is at a critical leadership crossroad. As with many fast growing startups, their pioneering product development and marketing power made them a major international success. Now Lazaridis and Ballsillie face the critical entrepreneurial growth test: can they shift from building the business to building an executive team that builds the business?

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Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on… Involved Leadership

The messenger must be the message. The most effective communication is face-to-face. But the most believable communication is behavior. We would all much rather see than hear a sermon. Many well intentioned managers lead change or improvement efforts that are all about changing everyone else while they carry on pretty much as before. They’re preaching […]

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Lean Leadership: Boosting or Blocking Lean/Six Sigma Tools and Techniques

A key element of my work last month with Qantas Airways in Australia involved linking customer focus, employee engagement, and process management. This month I was engaged by a national insurance company to help their executive team understand their role in implementing Lean/Six Sigma. My experience with Lean/Six Sigma began in the late eighties with […]

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