I had to stop myself laughing when I read Steve Tobak’s blog, Its the Strategy Stupid not because its particularly funny that organisations spend millions on Change management and still don’t always deliver results, but because it was refreshing to find someone else giving voice to issues that seem so obvious and frustrating for many of us in corporate life. Large investment programmes can take on a life of thier own and span many years. Ensuring original objectives are being achieved and monitoring strategy alignment is essential. It made me think of Danny Kaye’s poem “The kings new clothes”. 
In the same way that it was obvious to everyone except the king, that he was naked, it sometimes if feels like that in many of our businesses. Everyone seems to be walking around blissfully naked. When one points out that a few clothes in the right place would cover a lot of future embarrassment there is often little response. Steve Tobak seems highly frustrated with this situation and comments:-
“I’m a little tired of big consultants making big bucks off the backs of shareholders and employees on the flawed principal that it’s all about the change process and they’ve got a better one than the other guy”
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High Impact Delivery
After a tough recession, whether your business faces growth or cost challenges the luxury of spending time on elongated strategic reviews and large scale technology led programmes is diminishing. Getting results and delivering strategy is the focus. Haldane helps your business execute strategy by providing you with expertise on demand and bringing teams of practitioners together. Businesses today require a new form of support, whether it is to grow, re-structure, improve performance or transform.
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The time for a new breed of delivery partner and the launch of www.successful change.com
Well it’s here, Successful Change has finally been launched and we are looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas in the area of Strategy Execution and Change management. Interesting timing perhaps given that one of the big boys, Accenture (Read Article) , was recently giving an account of itself in the Times and suggesting that it is time for “execution” not larger technology-led programmes. Well I couldn’t agree more, but remind me, who is it that has been responsible for encouraging and establishing many such large amorphous programmes in the first place?! (more…)
The Nature Of Corporate Change
You may not know that in 1998 Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria, held a conference in order to explore the nature of corporate change. The conclusions were compiled into a text entitled, Breaking the Code of Change (Beer and Nohria, 2000) with the intent of addressing their thesis that the two primary approaches to change management should be more integrated if corporations wanted to improve their chance of success in delivering business transformation. In their theory any change approach with a primary focus on economic value was termed Theory “E”, while Theory “O” described those approaches harnessing organisational capability. In short, some firms are very top down while others are very bottom up in their approach. (more…)
