Increase performance through employee engagement

An old gent who was sweeping a hangar the size of a football field was asked what his job was and replied “I help put men into space” With the current economic condition, many organizations have been forced to cut costs and reduce staffing levels. These kinds of business decisions can affect the remaining employee’s ...

Better be the first to disrupt

Better be the first to disrupt. Why? Because it’s probably going to happen anyway and it’s much more profitable to be the disruptor. Instagram versus Kodak Let’s start with the most recent: Instagram versus Kodak Facebook has acquired Instagram, a fun, popular photo-sharing app for mobile devices for  approximately $1 billion in a combination of cash and ...

Killed by a corporate culture of complacency

What happened to Kodak, Schlecker and Blockbuster? They all have declared bankruptcy. Usually, when this hits the news it is analyzed by the numbers people who, looking at five years’ worth of financial data, give their quantitative and financial explanation of the failure. More qualitative types will go back 10 years sometimes, and even go ...

Driving and managing change will remain the number one priority

Few companies can avoid big, periodic changes in the guts of their business. Whatever the cause – market maturation, a tough macroeconomic environment, creeping costs, competitive struggles, or just a desire to improve. For companies to survive and strive in today’s competitive environment, they will need to change quickly and successfully. Managing change has to ...

When is comes to performance effective leadership matters

Today’s leaders make decisions in an increasingly unpredictable business environment. In a recent IBM study of 1,500 CEOs worldwide, more than 60 percent believed that their businesses today were more volatile, uncertain, and complex (IBM Global Business Services, 2010). It’s no wonder that the quality of leadership can make or break the sustainability of any ...

Not paying attention to culture undermines performance

Corporate culture is not a set of core values developed by a small group of people at an off-site leadership meeting. It is not always what a chief executive describes in an annual report or shareholder’s meeting. In fact, corporate culture is not always what the leadership team of an organization says or thinks it ...

High levels of employee disengagement and under engagement

An employee of GE once said to Jack Welch: You have paid for my hands for 24 years, but you could have had my brain for free So even the most successful companies fails to engage all employees. According to a recent survey on employee engagement in the US workforce from Modern Survey, it seems that only ...

Videos as a change management tool

Employees emotions are where the momentum for real transformation ultimately lies. Organizational change will be extremely difficult if managers rely only on making a case to the rational, analytical, problem-solving side of the brain. Instead, they must also make an emotional case for change and align the rational and emotional elements of the appeal. In ...

Top 50+ management resources you need to know

Fast-moving technologies, rapid global expansion, shifting business models, mergers and acquisitions all hold out dazzling possibilities. But leadership remains a huge challenge, even for companies relatively unscathed by the economic by economic turmoil. Today, employees continue to seek guidance from their leaders, who must find time to reassure their people while trying to establish a ...

Some companies get social media right

There is no doubt there are plenty of companies that don’t get social media right. But as an example of a company/brand that most assuredly “gets it” when it comes to social media, is KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines. KLM is more dedicated than many other companies to use social media and social technologies to add ...

The fine line between good stretch targets and bad ones

For targets to be meaningful and effective in motivating employees, they must be tied to larger organizational ambitions. Employees who don’t understand the roles they play in company success are more likely to become disengaged. No matter what level the employee is at, he should be able to articulate exactly how his efforts feed into ...

Change is inevitable and require companies to re-invent themselves

Massive transformation is sweeping across many different industries. Unfortunately to many companies are stuck in the jar. The art of life is a constant readjustment to our surroundings – Kakuzo Okakaura Blockbuster, once the dominant DVD franchise, has fallen into bankruptcy in an era of other video options. In Blockbuster’s case, it was streaming service and mail-order ...

Change management and the power of small wins

When you have a daunting mountain to climb, it is often best to break it into molehills. Large change management problems are best broken down into smaller ones with concrete achievable goals. Otherwise it can be so overwhelming that solutions seem unattainable – therefore, people often avoid tackling them or come up with single, grand ...

No company can nowadays afford to sit on their laurels

Germany’s biggest drugstore chain (high-street chemist) – Schlecker – has filed for bankruptcy. A company with seven thousand shops and thirty thousand employees. What went wrong? Had the competitive landscape changed? Was it the recession? Was it rapidly shifting technologies? Was it emerging disruptive business models? Was it changing consumer behavior? Over the last several ...