GPS Blog

Know Who You Are

“The success combination in business is:  Do what you do better… and do more of what you do…” – David Joseph Schwartz I watch a lot of football (the American kind).  One of the things that annoys me more and more as each season goes by is the epidemic of teams who don’t seem to … Read more

Why Change?

“We cannot become what we need to be without changing who we are.” – Max DePree Oftentimes as leaders we fail to see the need for change in our organizations.  Sometimes, though, we look at change as obvious.  We’re not happy with the results we’re getting or the way we’re getting them and we see … Read more

We Can Do It! (We Think)

“Confidence is a lot of this game or any game.  If you don’t think you can, you won’t.” – Jerry West We (and many other businesses out there) talk a lot about the factors that impact change.  We talk about accountability and leadership and vision and all sorts of other things.  One thing we don’t … Read more

How Do You Change?

“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” – W. Edwards Deming

As leaders we spent a lot of time talking about how much we work on change, how change is really hard, why change is important, what we hope to gain by change, etc.  One key change success factor that people quite often don’t talk about is the process you use to change.

When you have a change project to undertake, how do you go about it?  Too many organizations really can’t answer that – and that’s a problem.  Think about how much change you deal with on a regular basis.  These days, change is constant.  Wouldn’t it make sense that if you’re going to have to do something over and over and over that you’d have a clearly defined process for doing it?

Think about whatever your organization produces & sells.  Now think about how you do it – almost without exception, organizations have clearly defined processes for how they do what they do.  Not only that, but many organizations have clearly defined processes for administrative things too – budgeting, performance management, etc.  So why don’t you have a change process?

Why wouldn’t you have a consistent methodology & approach to change?  Why wouldn’t you teach your people to speak the same language when it comes to change?  Why wouldn’t you provide them with a common set of tools to use when they’re working on change projects?  Especially given that these days change projects seem to be most of what they’re working on!

Think about your organization.  How do you change?  What process do you use?  Do you have a consistent repeatable, proven methodology?  Or do you reinvent the wheel every time you make change?  Having a proven, reliable change process is a key factor in change success – make sure you know what you’re doing.

Innovation – THE Competitive Advantage

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand.  The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” – William Pollard One of the most important things an organization can understand about itself is what is its advantage in the marketplace.  For some organizations it might be price, for … Read more

Strategy Without People? Bad Idea.

“If you surround yourself with the smartest people you can find, people will think you’re a lot smarter than you are.  Only insecure people think this works the other way.” – Noah Callahan-Bever One of the most exciting things that can happen for an organization is growth.  People get excited about almost everything that comes … Read more

Planning for Success

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight Eisenhower I wouldn’t necessarily agree that plans are useless, but I think what Eisenhower meant was right on.  Once the shooting starts (or for those of us fortunate enough not to get shot at on a regular … Read more

What Are You Trying to Be?

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell Sometimes in our businesses and in our personal lives we get very focused on goals and initiatives, and often that’s a good thing.  It’s important not to get distracted … Read more

Honest Change

“The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.” – Armistead Maupin I’ve always like this quote, in spite of (or maybe because of) the fact that it makes me a little uncomfortable.  I think it makes me uncomfortable because our minds are pretty powerful, and … Read more

Growth & Change

“It is easy to sit up and take notice.  What is difficult is getting up and taking action.” – Al Batt All of our talk about growth the past few weeks & months is, in the end, just that – talk.  At some point the talking has to stop and the working has to begin.  … Read more

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