“Nearly 60 percent of projects aimed at achieving business change do not fully meet their objectives.” – IBM, 2008.
Why does this happen? As many working in Knowledge Management and related fields understand, it’s all about people and complexity. Organisations are increasingly dependent on people and what they know in order to operate successfully in today’s environment. It is no longer sufficient for organisational change to be driven by a small handful of people – there is no monopoly on ideas.
This is the topic of the presentation I delivered last Wednesday night at the Melbourne KMLF. The slide pack is now available on SlideShare.
I have posted on this topic here before, and delivered an earlier version of the presentation at trampoline.
Key points in this presentation are:
- Recent insights into effective organisational change.
- The impact of complexity and the importance of engaging people.
- Creativity and the wisdom of crowds.
- Social Media – the power of trust and openness.
For more background on the topics covered, here are some links to the material referenced:
- See the Wikipedia entry for Cynefin.
- Read more about Teresa Amabile’s work in an earlier post here – or see the original Harvard Business School article.
- See the RSA Animate overview of Dan Pink’s Drive on YouTube – The surprising truth about what motivates us.
- Read Greg Lloyd’s blog post about Drucker – Enterprise 2.0 Schism.
- See John Smythe’s Engage for Change site.
- See the Wikipedia entry for The Wisdom of Crowds.
For more on the change management tools and approaches mentioned, see these sites:
- Cognitive Edge – David Snowden’s site – for Cynefin and complexity tools.
- Anecdote – Shawn Callahan and Mark Schenk’s site – for business storytelling, change and anecdote circles.
- Gurteen Knowledge – David Gurteen’s site – for knowledge cafés.
- Change Management Toolbox – Michelle Lambert’s site – for the change management cards..
- The Organizational Zoo – Arthur Shelley’s site – for the book The Organizational Zoo and the matching zoo cards.
Finally, see “How to organise a children’s party” on YouTube.
