ANZ Bank has been on a 7 year journey to transform their culture and mindset, according to the Australian Institute of Management. The process started with employees being asked to select 10 values that best described the current ANZ culture, and their own top 10 personal values. According to Siobhan McHale, Head of Breakout and…
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The May 2007 issue of HBR had a nice little article by Stuart Rose, the CEO of Marks & Spencer, on the turnaround of the British icon. Rose’s account presents an interesting read from the perspective of Change Management and highlighted some of the principles in the change models presented in Leading Change and Managing…
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Brad Cork of Improving People has a nice piece of advice for dealing with difficult people that he calls Porcupine Theory. Brad writes: Every person has gold in there, it is just that for some of them it is buried deeper than others. I have a management theory that I call “Porcupine Theory”. It says…
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Brad Cork of Improving People has developed an acronym called GROWTH to help people understand some of the elements of a culture that fosters innovation. It stands for: Great Ideas are encouraged Reward and recognition (Great ideas are rewarded appropriately) Onwards & Upwards (Creating a positive change culture) Work with change (The skill to manage…
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This months BRW magazine has a nice little article on “the madness of meetings.” The article offers 3 interesting tips for getting more value out of meetings. In addition to the usual advice (such as set an agenda, record actions and assign responsibilities and distribute minutes documenting the decisions reached and the timelines for actioning…
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“Corporate culture can have a significant impact on a firm’s long-term economic performance . . . firms with cultures that emphasized all the key managerial constituencies (customers, stockholders, and employees) and leadership from managers at all levels outperformed firms that did not have those cultural traits by a huge margin. Over an eleven-year period, the…
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The Innovation Zen blog recently suggested a list of the top 10 ways to link culture and strategy. While Innovation Zen lists some good ideas, it seems to me the list misses or does not emphasise strongly what I believe are the three central activities for linking strategy and culture. These are: Identify your current…
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Business Week’s Nussbaum on Design recently underscored the critical point that building an innovation capability requires a substantial and ongoing commitment to business, process and cultural change. Reviewing BCG data on innovation, Nussbaum observed that: . . . right now it looks like managers are reacting to the realization that innovation is not simply about…
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An organisation I have been consulting with recently has been considering the question of to what extent communities of practice should be aligned with organisational goals and structure, and to what extent they have to be free to ‘do their own thing’. What level of accountability should the activities of a community of practice have…
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