Organizational Transformation Quotes

[A] process was going on in which people were transformed into things, into pieces of reality which pure science can calculate and technical science can control. … [T]he safety which is guaranteed by well-functioning mechanisms for the technical control of nature, by the refined psychological control of the person, by the rapidly increasing organizational control of society – this safety is bought at a high price: man, for whom all this was invented as a means, becomes a means himself in the service of means.

Arming employees with the tools, know-how, and mindset needed to successfully innovate on a continual basis will be paramount to organizational survival.

Innovation is a learned organizational capability. You must train people how to innovate and navigate organizational barriers that kill off good ideas before they can be tested.

We dubbed this goal—this state of emergent, adaptive organizational intelligence—shared consciousness, and it became the cornerstone of our transformation.

By bringing together people who share interests, no matter their location or time zone, social media has the potential to transform the workplace into an environment where learning is as natural as it is powerful.

Micromanagement is mismanagement. … [P]eople micromanage to assuage their anxieties about organizational performance: they feel better if they are continuously directing and controlling the actions of others—at heart, this reveals emotional insecurity on their part. It gives micromanagers the illusion of control (or usefulness). Another motive is lack of trust in the abilities of staff—micromanagers do not believe that their colleagues will successfully complete a task or discharge a responsibility even when they say they will.”108

Getting your ego out of the way has an even deeper organizational impact.

The sustainable success of digital transformation comes from a carefully planned organisational change management process that meets two key objectives, one being the company culture, and the other one is empowering its employees

last frontier of competitive advantage will be the transformation of unhealthy organizations into healthy ones,

Just implementing technology alone does not produce a digital transformation. Changing an organization by taking advantage of the potential of technologies does.

The purpose of digitalization is to make a significant difference in the overall levels of business performance and organizational maturity.

A hybrid organizational structure can bring greater awareness of intricacies and systemic value of organizational systems, processes, people dynamics, technology, and resource allocation, etc.

Doing scrum” is as meaningless (and impossible) as creating an instance of an abstract class. Scrum is a framework for surfacing organizational dysfunction. It is not a process and it is not prescriptive.

When it comes to transformation or deformation, organizational cultures are rarely neutral. For the most part cultural norms will support and catalyze or work against the process of spiritual transformation. Cultivating a culture

Three profoundly destabilizing scientific ideas ricochet through the twentieth century, trisecting it into three unequal parts: the atom, the byte, the gene. Each is foreshadowed by an earlier century, but dazzles into full prominence in the twentieth. Each begins its life as a rather abstract scientific concept, but grows to invade multiple human discourses-thereby transforming culture, society, politics, and language. But the most crucial parallel between the three ideas, by far, is conceptual: each represents the irreducible unit-the building block, the basic organizational unit-of a larger whole: the atom, of matter; the byte (or "bit"), of digitized information; the gene, of heredity and biological information.

term Lean was coined by John Krafcik in a 1988 article based on his master’s thesis at MIT Sloan School of Management1 and then popularized in The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking. Lean Thinking summarized Womack and Jones’s findings from studying how Toyota operates, an approach that was spearheaded by Taiichi Ohno, codified by Shigeo Shingo, and strongly influenced by the work of W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, Henry Ford, and U.S. grocery stores. Lean Thinking framed Toyota’s

People are typically more comfortable talking with others in their own environment; being asked to come to a conference room to help a leadership-heavy team evaluate work flow can evoke understandable anxiety and make them feel like they are on a witness stand. It is much more effective to go to them.

The most significant transformational moment in my career was an act of elimination. It wasn’t my idea. I was in my late thirties and doing well flying around the country giving the same talk about organizational behavior to companies. I was on a lucrative treadmill of preserving, but I needed my mentor Paul Hersey to point out the downside. “You’re too good at what you’re doing,” Hersey told me. “You’re making too much money selling your day rate to companies.” When someone tells me I’m “too good” my brain shifts into neutral—and I bask in the praise. But Hersey wasn’t done with me. “You’re not investing in your future,” he said. “You’re not researching and writing and coming up with new things to say. You can continue doing what you’re doing for a long time. But you’ll never become the person you want to be.” For some reason, that last sentence triggered a profound emotion in me. I respected Paul tremendously. And I knew he was right. In Peter Drucker’s words, I was “sacrificing the future on the altar of today.” I could see my future and it had some dark empty holes in it. I was too busy maintaining a comfortable life. At some point, I’d grow bored or disaffected, but it might happen too late in the game for me to do something about it. Unless I eliminated some of the busywork, I would never create something new for myself. Despite the immediate cut in pay, that’s the moment I stopped chasing my tail for a day rate and decided to follow a different path. I have always been thankful for Paul’s advice.

I frequently detect a hint of satisfaction in the accounts that manage to excavate moral and individual responsibility from the historical debris. Perhaps it is because of the unspoken belief that changing the people will change the outcome. 'No Hitler, no Holocaust.' If only a few individuals had resolved that it was unconscionable to be a bystander, then perhaps thousands would have been saved. I suppose there is some solace in recovering a history in which altering an isolated event transforms all that follows. But personalizing the story in this way can obscure how these were not isolated individuals operating on their own but rather were people situated in an organizational and historical context that profoundly shaped how they looked upon the world, what they believed they could do, and what they wanted to do. The UN staff and diplomats in New York, in the main, were highly decent, hard-working, and honorable individuals who believed that they were acting properly when they decided not to try to put an end to genocide. It is this history that stays with me.

In an organizational culture where respect and the dignity of individuals are held as the highest values, shame and blame don’t work as management styles. There is no leading by fear. Empathy is a valued asset, accountability is an expectation rather than an exception, and the primal human need for belonging is not used as leverage and social control. We can’t control the behavior of individuals; however, we can cultivate organizational cultures where behaviors are not tolerated and people are held accountable for protecting what matters most: human beings. We

And so, when I tell stories today about digital transformation and organizational agility and customer centricity, I use a vocabulary that is very consistent and very refined. It is one of the tools I have available to tell my story effectively. I talk about assumptions. I talk about hypotheses. I talk about outcomes as a measure of customer success. I talk about outcomes as a measurable change in customer behavior. I talk about outcomes over outputs, experimentation, continuous learning, and ship, sense, and respond. The more you tell your story, the more you can refine your language into your trademark or brand—what you’re most known for. For example, baseball great Yogi Berra was famous for his Yogi-isms—sayings like “You can observe a lot by watching” and “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It’s not just a hook or catchphrase, it helps tell the story as well. For Lean Startup, a best-selling book on corporate innovation written by Eric Ries, the words were “build,” “measure,” “learn.” Jeff Patton, a colleague of mine, uses the phrase “the differences that make a difference.” And he talks about bets as a way of testing confidence levels. He’ll ask, “What will you bet me that your idea is good? Will you bet me lunch? A day’s pay? Your 401(k)?” These words are not only their vocabulary. They are their brand. That’s one of the benefits of storytelling and telling those stories continuously. As you refine your language, the people who are beginning to pay attention to you start adopting that language, and then that becomes your thing.

The empowerment triangle turns drama upside-down, transforming the persecutor (or scapegoat) into a challenger, the rescuer into a coach, and the victim into a creator. The empowerment dynamic allows all the roles to be essential for growth. In the drama triangle, the persecutor works with issues of power, the rescuer works with issues of responsibility, and the victim works with area of vulnerability: The drama triangle is familiar to many of us. We all know this pattern inside ourselves. We get stuck in a situation that we want to escape, and it creates drama. By leaning into the dynamic and entering deeper into relationship, we can work the energy so that it becomes an enriching transformation. If you can work this in a group, then you’ve subdued the scapegoat archetype and turned it into something more life affirming. The most important thing about the drama triangle is to make people aware of it. When a group can understand and recognize how this is a kind of destructive pattern, it becomes empowered to change the pattern. Uncoupling drama from our organizational and personal lives is the key. The group as a whole can embody a role to create safety and make sense of the system. Transformation from the drama to the redeemed starts with a pause, then an inquiry of what’s happening here, then a recollection of the three roles and who is playing what role in this context. Once the system is self-aware, ask the questions: “what else is possible? How can I become so centered that something new can happen? How can a new perception take place?” With enough safety and connection, the group will be able to follow the healing energy into re-organization and re-integration of the parts. Claiming or remembering your own archetype can protect against falling into one.

the purpose of value stream mapping is to design a strategic improvement plan that will be executed over a period of time; it’s not designed to address problems at a detailed level.

The purpose of value stream mapping is to make strategic decisions about the future state.

In most cases, the kaizen bursts should describe the improvement generally (what), not specifically (how). Remember, value stream mapping is a strategic leadership activity that is part of a macro PDSA cycle. Designing and making specific improvements requires a series of micro PDSA cycles and heavy involvement from the front lines. You want those closest to the work designing tactical-level improvements rather than leaders who are too far from the work to determine exactly what should be done to reach a target condition.

A common behavior is to feel compelled to start improving the value stream at the micro level and focus on reducing process time. However, an interesting phenomenon occurs when teams maintain a macro perspective: process time reductions become a by-product of addressing the IT systems and barriers to flow at a macro level. The facilitator may frequently need to redirect the team to help them stay focused on the macro and eliminate the easy-to-see waste within the value stream. Going into the weeds (process-level analysis) comes later as you execute the transformation plan and define and document standard work via smaller PDSA cycles.

Companies that have the greatest success with sustained Lean transformation make an up-front commitment that eliminating work won’t result in eliminating people. It’s the work that’s non-value-adding, not the people.

If you use freed capacity to lay off staff, it’s a sign of disrespect. You can be assured that employee interest in further improvement activities will plummet and you will be unable to experience successful value stream improvement efforts in the future.

In those rare circumstances where layoffs are the only way for a business to survive (e.g., extreme market conditions), the organization should perform the reduction in force before embarking on a transformation journey that relies on creating a safe environment for the workforce to make innovative decisions.

it’s critical that an organization approach the freed capacity that is realized through process time reductions in a way that enables growth rather than viewing it as a labor reduction exercise that leads to layoffs.

Every value stream needs two to five key performance indicators (KPIs) that are tracked on a regular basis.

No matter how urgently improvement is needed, how skilled the facilitator is, or how well-intentioned the mapping team is, it’s unrealistic to expect work systems that have existed for years or even decades to be completely transformed in a matter of months. Any consultant who tells you that it’s likely, or even possible, should be shown the door. Change takes time.

We have observed that, when you ask people to describe a specific process in a value stream, there are at least four different versions: how managers believe it operates, how it’s supposed to operate (i.e., the written procedure, if one exists), how it really operates, and how it could operate.

Embracing value stream thinking is a mark of an organization that has successfully shifted from siloed thinking (what’s best for me and my team?) to holistic thinking (what’s best for the customer and the company?).

What to Do with Freed Capacity Freeing capacity is a vital way for labor-intensive organizations to increase the proportion of revenue to labor. The effort, though, should not result in layoffs. Rather, freeing capacity enables an organization to accomplish one or more of the following outcomes: Absorb additional work without increasing staff Reduce paid overtime Reduce temporary or contract staffing In-source work that’s currently outsourced Create better work/life balance by reducing hours worked Slow down and think Slow down and perform higher-quality work with less stress and higher safety Innovate; create new revenue streams Conduct continuous improvement activities Get to know your customers better (What do they really value?) Build stronger supplier relationships Coach staff to improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills Mentor staff to create career growth opportunities Provide cross-training to create greater organizational flexibility and enhance job satisfaction Do the things you haven’t been able to get to; get caught up Build stronger interdepartmental and interdivisional relationships to improve collaboration Reduce payroll through natural attrition

If there are no metrics in place, how can you know how well the value stream is performing, let alone if it is getting better or worse?

Establishing KPIs that are actively managed is a fundamental requirement for achieving operational excellence. The key phrase is “actively managed.

you might have to counter leaders’ objections to defining such a narrow scope for the current state map. But once you get through the future state design process, everyone will see that this is a highly effective approach to accomplishing the mission at hand.

In many cases, simply getting the basics in place across an entire value stream—standardizing the work, building in quality at the source, and installing visual management—can yield significant results,

key Lean maxim that should guide your mapping team’s every step is “maximum results through minimum effort.

The organizational digitalization is surely a transformation journey, as it has to permeate into business vision, strategy, culture, communication, and processes, etc.

The use of KPIs is meant to improve and transform the organizational performance.

But moving from enabling the business to being the business is challenging work. It means changing governance models, organizational structures, delivery methodologies and hiring practices. It means transforming IT people from technologists to strategists, from constructing hard lines around IT to creating an environment devoid of organizational boundaries, and from clamping down on employees attempts to develop their own technology to embracing end-user innovation. It also means driving change in the most difficult of all arenas: the mindset, the psyche, the most deeply held ways that we understand our jobs, our success, and our professional identity.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, has marshaled evidence that shows that when it comes to getting promoted in your job, strong relationships and being on good terms with your boss can matter more than competence.

Principles are like guidelines that help you test whether your actions are aligned with your beliefs and values, or not. If not, you have to search for another way to solve

Taking your company global is a business transformation exercise that can help you achieve your biggest and most ambitious dreams for your business.

The exercise of distilling complex work systems to their most essential and macro-level components builds critical thinking skills and creates a more manageable means for designing improvements to an entire system

An organization operating with a new master paradigm, the Re-Invention Paradigm, by contrast, develops an organizational context that operates from practices designed to “invent and commit,” the practices necessary to operate in a mode of transformation: declaring the future rather than predicting it; taking a stand rather than generating consensus; making bold promises that you don’t know how to keep; creating contexts; fulfilling new realms of possibility; and recruiting and developing catalysts for transformation rather than change agents.

In the organizational transformation frontline, strategies or propensity to innovate must be a culture, not a venture

In the dynamic landscape of modern business, effective customer relationship management (CRM) is no longer a luxury; it's a strategic necessity. Perfex CRM is not just software; it's a catalyst for organizational transformation.

Managing the Neutral Zone: A Checklist Yes No   ___ ___ Have I done my best to normalize the neutral zone by explaining it as an uncomfortable time that (with careful attention) can be turned to everyone’s advantage? ___ ___ Have I redefined the neutral zone by choosing a new and more affirmative metaphor with which to describe it? ___ ___ Have I reinforced that metaphor with training programs, policy changes, and financial rewards for people to keep doing their jobs during the neutral zone? ___ ___ Am I protecting people adequately from inessential further changes? ___ ___ If I can’t protect them, am I clustering those changes meaningfully? ___ ___ Have I created the temporary policies and procedures that we need to get us through the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I created the temporary roles, reporting relationships, and organizational groupings that we need to get us through the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I set short-range goals and checkpoints? ___ ___ Have I set realistic output objectives? ___ ___ Have I found the special training programs we need to deal successfully with the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I found ways to keep people feeling that they still belong to the organization and are valued by our part of it? And have I taken care that perks and other forms of “privilege” are not undermining the solidarity of the group? ___ ___ Have I set up one or more Transition Monitoring Teams to keep realistic feedback flowing upward during the time in the neutral zone? ___ ___ Are my people willing to experiment and take risks in intelligently conceived ventures—or are we punishing all failures? ___ ___ Have I stepped back and taken stock of how things are being done in my part of the organization? (This is worth doing both for its own sake and as a visible model for others’ similar efforts.) ___ ___ Have I provided others with opportunities to do the same thing? Have I provided them with the resources—facilitators, survey instruments, and so on—that will help them do that? ___ ___ Have I seen to it that people build their skills in creative thinking and innovation? ___ ___ Have I encouraged experimentation and seen to it that people are not punished for failing in intelligent efforts that do not pan out? ___ ___ Have I worked to transform the losses of our organization into opportunities to try doing things a new way? ___ ___ Have I set an example by brainstorming many answers to old problems—the ones that people say we just have to live with? Am I encouraging others to do the same? ___ ___ Am I regularly checking to see that I am not pushing for certainty and closure when it would be more conducive to creativity to live a little longer with uncertainty and questions? ___ ___ Am I using my time in the neutral zone as an opportunity to replace bucket brigades with integrated systems throughout the organization?

Sir Michael Howard suggested, in “width, depth, and context.”3 Leader development and education should promote an organizational culture in which higher-level commanders are comfortable with relinquishing control and authority to junior commanders while setting conditions for effective decentralized operations consistent with the doctrine of mission command. Junior leaders must possess a bias toward action and accept necessary risks associated with leading and fighting in complex and uncertain environments against determined and adaptive enemies.

projects deploy assets to accelerate organizational transformation, and priority management ensures that day-to-day activities are focused on reaching Desired Outcomes.

As Olivier Serrat of the Asian Development Bank wrote, “Micromanagement is mismanagement.… [P]eople micromanage to assuage their anxieties about organizational performance: they feel better if they are continuously directing and controlling the actions of others—at heart, this reveals emotional insecurity on their part. It gives micromanagers the illusion of control (or usefulness). Another motive is lack of trust in the abilities of staff—micromanagers do not believe that their colleagues will successfully complete a task or discharge a responsibility even when they say they will.

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

You’ve now read the central elements to an optimistic climate, but what exactly does it look like? Here’s what it looks like when it takes root and positively transforms the work environment:37 1. People anticipate good things will come from their work. 2. Personal and professional goals are achieved. 3. Personal and professional worlds are integrated. 4. People make satisfying progress with their work. 5. Financial metrics are achieved. 6. People are viewed as significant and the heart of success. 7. Values-based leadership guides actions and decisions. 8. Partnership and collaboration replaces hierarchy-driven interactions. 9. Community building is encouraged. 10. Organizational and personal purpose guide decisions. 11. Strengths are maximized. Keep in mind that the vibe in your team is constantly changing. So the conditions listed above may not all be present at the same time. That’s okay. What you choose to focus on based on the needs of your team will influence heavily what emerges as important.

one might make the case that managers have been coopted into the project of globalization and radical competition, which is supposedly brought about through constant change and innovation, as well as tighter and tighter scrutiny of the performance of staff measured against highly reductive metrics. This has affected both how managers are educated to do their jobs, their sense of professionalism and identity and what they find themselves involved in doing as managers. One of their principle roles is thought to be to champion innovation, by designing, implementing and supervising the necessary transformational changes that will guarantee competitive advantage.

English exports, led by cotton textiles, doubled between 1780 and 1800. It was the growth in this sector that pulled ahead the whole economy. The combination of technological and organizational innovation provides the model for economic progress that transformed the economies of the world that became rich.

Digital transformation requires changes to processes and thinking—changes that span your internal organizational silos. The clear delineation between technical skills and leadership skills is blurring fast.

The ability to visualize non-visible work is an essential first step in gaining clarity about and consensus around how work gets done.

This adaptive capacity is the crucial leadership element for a changing world (see fig. 7.1). While it is grounded on the professional credibility that comes from technical competence and the trust gained through relational congruence, adaptive capacity is also its own set of skills to be mastered. These skills include the capacity to calmly face the unknown to refuse quick fixes to engage others in the learning and transformation necessary to take on the challenge that is before them to seek new perspectives to ask questions that reveal competing values and gaps in values and actions to raise up the deeper issues at work in a community to explore and confront resistance and sabotage to learn and change without sacrificing personal or organizational fidelity to act politically and stay connected relationally to help the congregation make hard, often painful decisions to effectively fulfill their mission in a changing context This capacity building is more than just some techniques to master. It’s a set of deeply developed capabilities that are the result of ongoing transformation in the life of a leader.

Being a transformational leader increases productivity and bottom line results whether people decide to stay or go because the motivation to succeed is internally based on individual growth not externally based on organizational goals.

Organizational maturity is not just about technical excellence or process efficiency, but also about business effectiveness, agility, innovation intelligence, and people-centricity.

The organizational fit is the good balance of the fitting attitude and misfit thinking.

An organizational norm that says, “We value practice over theory but we value theory-informed practice over ad-hoc practice” helps to restore some respect for theory. We

Goethe asserted, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

If apostolic refounding is about anything, it is about a return to the sources. Organizational renewal therefore involves the discovery of an organization’s true identity and mission. The authority to bring transformation to the church does not rest in the person of the leader or group but in God’s calling. Therefore, the key to the revitalization of religious organizations is to reappropriate, or recover, their founding charism. When Dallas Willard, an influential theologian and thinker, urges younger leaders to “stir the primal coals of your movement, do what they did, say what they said,” he is wisely encouraging them to be radical traditionalists.

LEADERSHIP ABILITIES Some competencies are relevant (though not sufficient) when evaluating senior manager candidates. While each job and organization is different, the best leaders have, in some measure, eight abilities. 1 STRATEGIC ORIENTATION The capacity to engage in broad, complex analytical and conceptual thinking 2 MARKET INSIGHT A strong understanding of the market and how it affects the business 3 RESULTS ORIENTATION A commitment to demonstrably improving key business metrics 4 CUSTOMER IMPACT A passion for serving the customer 5 COLLABORATION AND INFLUENCE An ability to work effectively with peers or partners, including those not in the line of command 6 ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT A drive to improve the company by attracting and developing top talent 7 TEAM LEADERSHIP Success in focusing, aligning, and building effective groups 8 CHANGE LEADERSHIP The capacity to transform and align an organization around a new goal You should assess these abilities through interviews and reference checks, in the same way you would evaluate potential, aiming to confirm that the candidate has displayed them in the past, under similar circumstances.

As Deming is commonly reported to have said, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.

after you have chosen an approach, you don’t need to worry about getting the advantages of that design because it will come naturally. Where you need to provide management focus is on addressing the disadvantages of your organizational choice.

The organizational digital transformation journey is where the juice is in the organization, not just the destination.

in order to attract private actors to carry through their innovation projects and policies, various components of the NSS have to create, and periodically update, a whole system of incentives and organizational arrangements—ranging from the funding and design of technology development to intellectual property and procurement reforms. Over time, this motivating process draws the NSS further and further into promoting commercial technology from which both sectors can draw benefit. But throughout this process of give and take, the NSS continues to set the goals, make the rules (for example, by setting performance standards), and define the problem sets for industry and university researchers to tackle. The outcome is what I characterize as a system of governed interdependence—neither “statist” nor “free-market” in its approach to inducing transformative innovation.

the facilitator’s role shifts from a coach who helps a team uncover and analyze “what is”—a left-brain activity—to a coach who inspires a team to innovate and design “what could be”—a right-brain activity. Skilled facilitators can easily shift between these two roles.

Paperback 204 pages ISBN: 9780996871839 Available in print, digital and audiobook formats If you have ever experienced infighting, such as a team ora department pitting itself against another team or department; if you have ever worked for a micromanaging and overbearing boss; if you have ever navigated the changes that come with a merger or other significant restructuring process, then you have had a front-row seat to organizational drama. David Emerald’s 3 Vital Questions: Transforming Workplace Drama was written for you! “It is impossible to describe what a profound impact the 3 Vital Questions have had on my life, personally and professionally.” —Chris Nagel, Director of Leadership & Team Development, Cleveland

Elsewhere I have defined organizational culture as what you stop noticing when you have worked somewhere for over three months,

a world characterized by a limited and vertical nervous system and by walls’. Instead we need to move to ‘networks – an open, fluid team of teams and continuous change making’ (quoted in Elkington and Braun, 2013: 38). This is echoed by Jon Katzenbach (2012): Today, with the ever-increasing necessity of working across organizational and geographical boundaries, and the growing complexity of daily business, more leaders at all levels are finding that it’s not always practical – or even best – to put together a team. Fortunately, we now have more options; in particular, consider the potential of focused networks, and sub-groups that can work more effectively in different modes than a ‘real team.

Hedberg (1981) writes that: ‘Very little is known about how organizational unlearning differs from that of individuals.’ But his work explores how unlearning can be blocked, particularly by the danger of too much success: ‘Organizations which have been poisoned by their own success are often unable to unlearn obsolete knowledge in spite of strong disconfirmations’. This is echoed by Bill Gates who said: ‘Success is a lousy teacher!

The secret to growing as a leader is that you have to do some inner work, none of which can be done for you. And there are no guarantees. Your personal work is what will ultimately transform your leadership.

When you find yourself in a moment of doubt, you can turn it into an opportunity to ask yourself how your deeper motivations and your colleagues’ might play into the situation, possibly transforming the dynamic.

Steve and Karen extend our view beyond the interrelationships of team, management, and leadership practices, beyond the skillful adoption of DevOps, and beyond the breaking down of silos—all necessary, but not sufficient. Here we see the evolution of holistic, end-to-end organizational transformation, fully engaged and fully aligned to enterprise purpose.

Simple organisational mechanisms, such as the creation of a sub committee of the EXCO body, under the authorisation of the CEO and chaired by the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or the Chief Operating Officer (COO) — i.e., those who have the necessary organisational authority to resolve issues — should be established. Reporting into this group should be weekly and any variance to plan should be identified for resolution. There may be other organisational solutions but as a minimum, project reporting should be frequent and escalation for issue resolution should be integral to the process.

According to Harrison Owen, “the key ingredients for deep creative learning are real freedom and real responsibility.

The difference between rules and principles is that for setting up rules, you need to analyze every possible situation before formulating it. Rules are based on the pattern of if-this-happens-do-that.

And when you do have the authority to act but worry that doing so may cause tension for others, it’s much safer and more comfortable to just take action when you know any tensions that result will be transformed into organizational learning in the next governance meeting—and when your team had a voice in giving you that authority in the first place.

Service Management transforms resources into Services by taking advantage of organizational capabilities.

The Church has its hierarchical arrangement and structure. It is an arrangement and structure which serves the realization and manifestation of the Church, that is the celebration of the Eucharist. But there is no administrative or organizational intentionality, at least, preceding the truth of the Church, its identity; for where such an intentionality does precede, it brings confusion and falsification of that truth and identity. The administrative arrangement and organizational structure and hierarchy of officers in the Church results from the celebration of the Eucharist and is concerned with this alone. Secondarily, they serve the dynamic extension of the Eucharist, the eucharistic transformation of the life of the faithful, the declaration and testimony of their faith to the world outside.

In reality, true military innovation is less about technology than about operational and organizational transformation.

It turns out that an organizational structure that worked well for a Swedish music streaming company may not work for an investment bank. In addition, the original paper showed a snapshot of how Spotify worked in 2012 and things have changed since. It turns out not even Spotify uses the Spotify model.

Transforming Culture It is easier to kill an organization than it is to change it. —Tom Peters Every gathering of people, every organization has a culture. Though a local church is much more than just an organization, every church has a culture. Some church cultures are healthy and some are unhealthy, but every church has a culture. Healthy church cultures are conducive for leadership development. They don’t merely say they value leadership development; they actually believe the Church is responsible to develop and deploy leaders, and they align their actions to this deeply held conviction. Culture ultimately begins with the actual beliefs and values that undergird all the actions and behavior. A church’s capacity for developing leaders relies on the collective worldview of the church and whether it is compatible with the ambition. A church’s culture has the power to significantly impede or empower its effectiveness in the Great Commission and the call to multiplication. Leaders create culture and culture shapes leaders and churches, even without recognizing it. Ministry leaders must understand the transformative power of culture if they want to have mature communities of faith.1 Organizational culture, and more pertinently church culture, is intensely potent. Church culture is a powerful force in the hands of those who shape a local church according to God’s design. If you are reading this book in any type of building, rebar is likely holding the building up and connecting the structure together. Glance up from the book and look for the rebar (short for reinforcing bar). You can’t see it, but it is impacting everything you see. You often can’t see culture, not in the same way you can see the doctrinal statement (the expressed convictions) or the leadership pipeline (the expressed constructs), but it holds everything in place. For better or worse, culture impacts your church more than you often realize. Building on the expert work of Edgar Schein, church culture can be seen in three layers, each layer building and depending on the layer below it.2 These layers move from actual beliefs to articulated beliefs, to the expression of those beliefs (called artifacts). All three layers make up the culture in a church. Actual beliefs are what the group collectively believes, not merely says they believe.

Principle five behind the Startup Way philosophy is continuous transformation: All of this requires the development of a new organizational capability: the ability to rewrite the organization's DNA in response to new and diverse challenges. It would be a shame to transform only once. When a company has figured out how to transform, it can - and should - be prepared to do it many more times in the future.

You cannot lead an organizational #DigitalTransformation, if you haven't disrupted yourself.

You cannot lead an organizational Digital Transformation if you haven't disrupted yourself.

The critical path for any Digital Transformation is Digital Leadership and Culture, not technology.

Beware leaders that want to negotiate for shorter time frames than the team feels is prudent. Most leaders have been away from the front lines for a long time and have grown out of touch with how long it takes to plan and execute well-thought-out improvements.

In terms of overall transformation plan ownership, we recommend a sole accountable party.

We find a direct link between results and the degree to which the executive sponsor remains visibly engaged.

The governor of Illinois feared that armed Mormon retaliation could escalate into a civil war. He urged Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, and his followers to leave the state. Soon the urging became more insistent: leave or be forcibly expelled. Young agreed to go. Young now faced a serious organizational challenge. How do you plan an exodus? How should you move thousands of families and their horses, mules, oxen, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats, geese, and goats, all while searching for a permanent home? Young stewed on the problem, debated with his advisors, and finally, on January 14, 1847, announced that the Lord had spoken to him. The Church should divide into small companies, each led by a single captain, and head west.

Whereas clarity and ingenuity are required for creating current and future state maps, focus and discipline are essential for successfully executing and sustaining improvement.

We're often asked how frequently a value stream should be improved. The answer is continuously. We understand that's a tall order for many organizations, but continuous improvement is your only way out of a culture of reactive firefighting, which prevents your organization from excelling on all levels.

Learning to see and manage work from a value stream perspective is a powerful way to instill new ways of thinking into the DNA of your organization and achieve higher levels of performance.