Leading big change

I am indebted to Phil this week for his thought provocation about John Kotters 8 step change framework. I have been involved in change for nearly 20 years and still consider myself a student (there is always so much more to learn). Phil's comment about Kotters model being too top down got me thinking about change in companies. I can see why the model can be seen as being heirarchical, but Phil's comment got me to step back and consider the bigger picture in organisations; revisiting some of the drivers for change and then the approaches to it.

Well folks on Friday, my last day in the office for 2007, I sent the two levels of management above me and one manager above and to the left, a flash demo of the reporting that we have created. The objective is to gain executive sponsorship to bring our project into the mainstream and become the reporting scorecard the division uses.

When I first took the leap to self employment, after several years as a senior director and then CEO, one of the most helpful pieces of advice I received was that of all the things I  now could do, I needed to decide what I actually wanted to do, and that could take 12-18 months of trying different assigments  to be clear about.

If you are looking to change the culture in your part of your organization, these are the 10 factors that you need to work on. As you can see, your own behaviour is Number 1, 2, and 3 on the list. Edgar Schein is possibly the world’s leading culture expert.