Jim Collins, the author of Built to last and Good to great examines our peceptions of how change in orgnizations happens, and finds that most of our current thinking is dead wrong. This is one of the best and most insightful articles I’ve read in a loooong time. A teaser:
I want to give you a lobotomy about change. I want you to forget everything you’ve ever learned about what it takes to create great results. I want you to realize that nearly all operating prescriptions for creating large-scale corporate change are nothing but myths.
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Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken. All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!” and “The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!” From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation — as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken.
The key to succesful change: Put “Who” before “What”. Read the article at (where else) Fast Company.
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