Answering the 17 questions contained in our Preparing for Change Flowchart will assist you in preparing to address or navigate the potential pitfalls associated with an intentional change initiative. It can also help you problem solve what might not be working in your response to an unintentional change initiative.
Preparing for Successful Change
Check out our paper on “Preparing for Successful Change.” Implementing a change initiative is more than a simple technical fix for your problems. Instead, it’s a significant shift in the way things happen in your business. How well the implementation is managed is a strong indicator future success and how many of the potential benefits your organization will actually experience. This 3-page document provides an overview of the holistic change model we developed (as part of our Knowesys collaborative). Preparing for Successful Change
Navigating Change for Success
“Navigating Change for Success” is a collaborative white paper Don Johnston and Cindy Weeks co-authored that was presented at the MEMO conference in Ontario Canada in 2010. In this VUCA world, organizations need to continuously adapt to change in the ecosphere, change that is speeding up every year. Organizations that are intentionally linked to their ecosphere are in a position to co-create a future in which they can survive, and thrive. This is a deeper look at adaptive change in a VUCA world, including engagement strategies for each dynamic.
Leading at the Cusp of Change (a Prezi)
“Leading at the Cusp of Change”
is the presentation we shared at the Washington State Nonprofit Conference on May 11, 2012. It’s about the intersection of leadership and adaptive change, VUCA and VUCA prime, our change model, and what you can do to better prepare yourself and your organization for the future.
Adaptive Enterprise
Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-And-Respond Organizations – by Stephan Haeckel
Unpredictable, discontinuous change is an unavoidable consequence of doing business in the Information Age. Because this intense turbulence demands fast – even instantaneous – response, many large companies are fragmenting themselves into smaller, quick-response units. But in doing so, they relinquish important advantages of scale and scope. Is it possible to have it both ways? Can large, complex firms adapt successfully and systematically to unexpected change? Yes, says Stephan Haeckel, but only if leaders learn how to manage their organizations as adaptive systems. In “Adaptive Enterprise,” Haeckel updates the concept of the corporation for the Information Age with a radical and comprehensive rethinking of organizational strategy, structure, and leadership. He outlines the new sense-and-respond business model that is helping companies systematically cope with the unexpected. Haeckel argues that when unpredictability is a given, the only strategy that makes sense is a strategy to become adaptive – to sense early and respond quickly to abrupt changes in individual customer needs. As a result, a firm’s operations must be driven by current customer requests – implicit as well as articulated – rather than by plans to make and sell what customers are forecasted to want in the future. Here, for the first time, is a clear and comprehensive strategy for transforming firms into adaptive systems. “Adaptive Enterprise” is both a new way of thinking about business and a handbook for leadership of postindustrial organizations. It maps out, with examples and illustrations, a step-by-step plan that companies can use to transform themselves into a new type of organization – one in which change is not a problem to be solved, but rather an indispensable source of energy, growth, and value.
Managing Transitions
Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change – by William Bridges
A significant number of the organizations we work with are struggling with the necessary transition from being entrepreneurial to “getting organized.” The larger challenge is that their leadership mindset often keeps them from even being able to see how their behavior is holding them back in spite of their best intentions, abundance of energy and all the other great attributes that previously led to success.
Make sure you get the revised and updated 3rd Edition. It has valuable new material.
