Change Management

5 stages of change

October 29, 2012
One of the most tested models for changing behavior assumes five stages of change: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. The idea is not to hurry or skip stages. You need each stage to move to the next one.

Help your troops manage risk & change

August 5, 2012
To help your troops manage risk and change, help them access the information that will allow them to react well—and without fear—just like the Royal Marines, who have been trained to convert uncertainty (and fear) into well-defined risks.

Burn the houses, save the nails

July 19, 2012

Culture matters. It affects both performance and outcomes. A quick review of early American ­history shows a parallel between building a house then and building an organization now.

Ford’s better idea?

July 10, 2012

Ford Motor, led by CEO Alan Mulally, is fighting for American manufacturing with a single strategy: simplify. This One Ford strategy means selling the same model, built the same way, in all markets.

A faster cycle of change

June 28, 2012

Learning faster than your competitors can lead to a competitive advantage. So can changing faster than your competitors. What you learn has to be translated into change. And that suggests a continuous feedback loop of perceiving and change.

Always have Plan B

March 26, 2012
Having a Plan B is what saved Bill Gantz’s pharmaceutical giant Baxter Corp. With Plan B in his back pocket, Gantz saved his company and sold it to Chiron Novartis for $720 million.

4 ways to make complex choices easier

March 23, 2012
Sheena ­Iyengar and her fellow researchers at Columbia Business School set up a tasting booth near the entrance of a store, putting out either six choices of jam or 24 choices. They found that people were six times more likely to buy a jar of jam if they had only six choices versus 24. What are the implications for business leaders?

Finding the opportunities in bad news

December 8, 2011
If people don’t feel safe bringing bad news to you, then they’ll never want to bring anything but a rosy outlook. “So I had to change how I behaved, and start to thank people for bringing me bad news,” says Joseph Jimenez, who took over as a division president for an underperforming company.

CEO goes from social-media pew to pulpit

December 5, 2011

In 2007, CEO Michael Lewis, ILD Corp., knew about social-networking sites but he didn’t participate in any of them. The wake-up call came when an em­­ployee googled ILD Corp. and the result was ugly: dozens of customer complaints about charges and billing. Thus began Lewis’ migration from the back pew to the pulpit, where social media is concerned.

Can you make the bold, strategic bets?

September 12, 2011
At some point within the next decade, leaders of both large and small companies will have to make a strategic bet, perhaps even several. That’s why leaders must have the ability to see the need for a game-changing move and seize the moment. Do you have the fortitude for it?