Can Interim Management Increase the Success Rate of Your Project?

For cash strapped businesses in today's economic climate, time really is money. With budgets being cut and staff under ever increasing pressure to perform, day-to-day projects can be a real struggle to complete. One way in which a number of companies have tried to combat this, is with the employment of an interim manager.

An interim manager is a senior level member of staff that is brought in to assist in the running of specific projects. Over a short-term contract, which can last anything from a few weeks to a few months, they bring specialist knowledge into any team. With extensive experience in completing projects in this way, interim managers implement long term changes.

With the economy in the unstable state it is in currently, interim or change managers tend to only be brought in to boost poorly performing companies. This can be due to a particular crisis, the sudden departure of a senior level member of staff, or just to boost flagging sales. By bringing in these temporary members of staff, companies can find their feet quickly and easily.

Your Business' Operational Brand

When we decide to make improvements to our business, the number of options available to us can seem overwhelming. Anyone who has looked into the Lean Transformation toolbox will remember how they felt when they first saw the full range of methods and techniques. However, there is a very simple way of deciding which tools will work best and that is to ask yourself whether the way your business operates lives up to the brand you have designed for it and the image you wish to project to your customers. To put this into perspective let me tell you briefly about some work I did with one of my clients. They were under pressure from their customers to improve their performance, particularly with respect to on time deliveries, and were about to embark in some Value Stream Mapping activities. At the point that I came to support the business there was already a long shopping list of methods, problems and potential improvements available for review. The problem was that after some analysis they were now stuck deciding on the most effective course of action.

Morale and Change: What Role Does Morale Really Play in Your Business's Change Strategy

I was recently asked by a friend and colleague about the role employee morale plays in the change process, and how I recommend implementing change with either good or bad morale present.

First, for this discussion, morale will be understood to be the overall mood of an organization. This mood will be either good or bad, exist in varying degrees, and apply differently to people throughout the organization. The aggregate of all the individual moods within the organization becomes the overall morale; i.e. "The morale here at XYZ Co. is pretty good."

Secondly, it's very important to understand that morale is an effect. Many believe morale to be an underlying emotion, but it's not. Morale is an outward expression, a physical manifestation of some emotional state. As such, morale should not be the focus of change but rather a measurement of how successful a deeper change strategy is.

Why Renting Plastic Packing Crates Is the Best Solution for a Business Move or Reorganisation

The number of cardboard boxes required would be difficult to estimate and therefore to budget for. Heavier items are best packed in smaller boxes, which would make them easier to lift, so a variety of box sizes would need to be considered. Cardboard boxes are typically supplied flat-packed, so time is wasted assembling and sealing boxes. Cardboard boxes vary in their strength and durability, and are broadly available in a single or double walled construction. Double walled construction offers the most strength but even then if boxes are exposed to moisture or excessive pressure they become weakened.

Plastic packing crates are manufactured from tough polypropylene, which makes them exceptionally robust and secure. They are specifically designed to hold and protect the items within them, so the risk of damage to contents is minimised. Most removal crates come in lidded varieties which means they are weatherproof and can be securely sealed.

Organisation Culture Change

Culture is essentially the way an organisation does things. Culture is something that is shared either in the organisation as a whole, or among specific groups or functions within the organisation. Culture drives the way in which people behave within the organisational setting. It's important to organisations because the way it does things has a direct impact on the effectiveness of the organisation.

Culture is difficult to measure possibly because it is not a hard process that can be adapted and changed through the directives and policy. Instead culture is intangible, and is built from a mixture of norms, beliefs, values and symbols that are played out in the day-to-day machinations of organisational life.

Furthermore cultures are dynamic and change over a period of time, resulting from group interactions, leadership behaviour, organisational structure and rules of interaction. As people leave or join the organisation the culture of the organisation will shift over a period of time, the size of the shift will depend on the intensity of shared experience within the organisational setting.

How Can the Role of Leadership Be Best Understood in Organizational Change?

Leadership as the Head

The Head offerr a prescriptive long-range strategic framing of the role of leadership in organisational change, common in bureaucratic approaches to organisational theory. The Head may take a normative re-educative approach influencing bodily reactions to stimuli; asserting power with mind over matter to affect change in a power-coercive approach; or making decisions to improve the wellbeing of the body to perform better by employing an empirical-rational leadership approach.

In this context the role of leadership relies heavily on the bureaucratic position, political power, authority and an implicit assumption that all change is a result of a planned change strategy, whether continuous or episodic. It also assumes that it is driven from the top in a linear way influencing how the Body responds. 

Have Trainers Really Grasped the Importance of Training Transfer?

Introduction

Trainers face pressure to demonstrate that training delivers the desired skills, knowledge and behaviours required to enable the organisation to improve its performance. Transfer demonstrates the effectiveness of a training programme and is important because, it is believed that there is a relationship between improving employee capability and achieving competitive advantage.

Training spend in the UK is approximately £23.5bn per year. Stakeholders want a return on investment (ROI) from the training delivered. However, the 2011 CIPD Survey found only 28% of organisations measure ROI and conduct a cost/benefit analysis.

Definitions and Meanings

A review of research offered a number of definitions regarding transfer:

Career Coaching for Success in a Changing World

Change brings stress and its human nature to find comfort in patterns of consistency. The crutch of predictive repetitiveness is that it is unsustainable. We need to change or adapt in order to survive. The world is changing with more frequency as we enter the knowledge economy fueled by digital communications and technological advances. These changes create uncertainty and reinventing our knowledge, skills, and abilities on a weekly basis is more than challenging. Globalization has contributed to the mass confusion of where we fit into the picture and how we could do something substantial with our lives. There is more competition for resources than ever before in our human history.

With all this change and complication has come increased knowledge and understanding. We have acquired more worldly views and gained a new appreciation for learning as a society. Doors have opened where there were none before. New industries have evolved and newer platforms will emerge in the future. 

Changing Change

Change is uncomfortable. It's not what we're accustomed to experiencing. Typically, the process of change doesn't "feel" good. Now, sometimes it feels good to know we're doing something that's outside of our norm and for our best, but usually, we don't enjoy the product of change until we're reaping the hard-earned rewards of our work - which happens after we've endured the process of change.

People are reluctant to change - not because they don't believe there might be a better way, but because the process of getting to where they want to be - feels all too unfamiliar. So, they turn back - they go back to what they know - they return to routine.

If you've read any of my articles before, you know by now that I'm fascinated by change-management concepts. I'm intrigued by human behavior, especially as it intersects (and sometimes interferes) with our professional lives. How do we stop doing what isn't working and start doing what would help us become successful?