Change Management - What is it and why it matters?

Complexity of Change

 According to Wiki, ‘Change management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organisations from a current state to a desired future state.

It is an organisational process aimed at helping employees to accept and embrace changes in their current business environment.’

Such definition of Change Management is often called Organisation Change Management to differentiate from the software change management that refers to software configuration management or project change control that refers to managing the project scope, timeline, and budget.

When we talk about the Organisation Change Management we need to understand who needs to change and who are all the stakeholders that will be affected.

Any change in the organisation involves to various degrees following stakeholders:

• Customers – they experience change in customer service at all touch points, unless change is completely internal (hard to imagine such changes these days!)
• Executive team – they need to formulate the strategy and embrace the change first so they can ‘walk the talk’ and inspire the organisation to internalise the change
• Line management (within an organisation and within partner organisations) – they need to interpret the strategy, define the ‘how to’ plan, and then embrace the change so that they can become effective mentors and coaches and continue to inspire ‘by example’
• Line workers (within an organisation and within partner organisations) – they make the change happen or not; when they are inspired and identify with the change the organisation achieves true transformation

Given the wide reach of change on all levels of stakeholders internally and externally to the organisation, the program that has to be put in place needs to define correctly the scope of the change being introduced and the areas being impacted.

Read more of this article: Business Process Management (BPM) - Change Management - What is it and why it matters?

Electric car charging from public solar panels

Electric car owners in Zurich who want to charge up with green energy can have their battery communicate with a local utility’s solar panels and find out whether the panels are producing at that point in time.

If they are, the battery can instruct the utility to send electricity.

It’s part of a small trial between IBM and Swiss utility EKZ involving an app, cloud computing services and a phonebook sized data-recording device installed on “several” EVs including a Renault Twingo, an IBM press release states.

The device was developed by Zurich University.

The app also lets the car owner hand over charging responsibility to EKZ, which can schedule charge-ups when sun and wind power is available, and better manage its peak load generation.

One knock on EVs is that they’re only as green as the form of electricity that feeds them – coal-base electricity does not reduce a car’s carbon footprint as much as renewable electricity does. But wind and solar sources do not furnish constant electricity the way coal does.

The app can help assure the car charges only when the sun shines or the wind blows. (Although the bigger step will come when utilities switch to 100 percent renewable, taking the guesswork out).

The app runs on mobile devices, tablets and web browsers.

In addition, owners can read the app while they’re away from their car – say, in the office or even thousands of miles away – to check how much charge remains.

All the more reason why cars might could one day come for “free” as part of a service package from a utility, a mobile phone company or an internet provider.

Photo: BP Solar

Social Media In the C-Suite: Listening, Learning and Creating a Strategy from the Top Down

As social media becomes more pervasive in the modern business landscape, creating a strategy for its use can no longer be confined to the tech or marketing side of any operation.

In the recently released Social Media Leadership: How to Get off the Bench and into the Game, author Michael F. Lewis, chairman and CEO of business services company ILD and consulting firm Social Strategy1, offers managers a guide to understanding and leveraging tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Groupon.

Knowledge@Wharton sat down with Lewis, along with Wharton marketing professor Eric Bradlow and Steve Ennen, president and chief intelligence officer of Social Strategy1, to discuss the opportunities and potential pitfalls of implementing a social media strategy.

An edited version of the transcript appears here

UK Unemployment in graphics - Oct 2011

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the unemployment rate also increased to 8.1%.

The unemployment total for 16-24 year olds hit a record high of 991,000 in the quarter, a jobless rate of 21.3%.

The claimant count, the number of people out of work and claiming benefits, rose 17,500 to 1.6 million in September.

Other figures showed a record cut in the number of part-time workers, down by 175,000, and there was also a record reduction of 74,000 in the number of over-65s in employment.

 

Other figures showed a record cut in the number of part-time workers, down by 175,000, and there was also a record reduction of 74,000 in the number of over-65s in employment.

How to Prepare for a Black Swan

A number of unexpected catastrophes and shortages dominated the headlines in the first quarter of 2011.

Japan was hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that caused a nuclear disaster, persistent power outages, and a host of other major societal and economic challenges.

China sharply tightened its limits on exports of rare earth minerals, on which the information technology, automotive, and energy industries rely.

The nations of the Middle East and North Africa experienced severe political eruptions, including civil war in Libya and regime-shaking protests in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Tunisia, which pushed oil prices above US$100 per barrel.

Portugal and Greece tottered on the edge of insolvency, destabilizing their political leaders. Christchurch, New Zealand, was hit by two major earthquakes in quick succession, and the state of Queensland in Australia suffered the worst floods in recorded history in at least six river systems, resulting in great social and economic disruption.

All these events are examples of the kinds of high-magnitude, low-frequency upheavals that Nassim Nicholas Taleb labeled black swans, after a historical reference to their improbability.

In The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2007), Taleb defined a black swan as “an event with the following three attributes.

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.

Second, it carries an extreme impact.... Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.”

Whether environmental, economic, political, societal, or technological in nature, individual black swan events are impossible to predict, but they regularly occur somewhere and affect someone.

Some observers argue that the frequency of these events is increasing; others say global communication networks have simply made us more aware of them than we were in the past.

In any case, with the rise of global business, it is likely that black swans carry increased risks for your company, including negative impacts on your customers, suppliers, partners, assets, operations, employees, and shareholders.

Today, not only can a catastrophe in one part of the world affect the sourcing, manufacture, shipping, and sale of products locally, but the interconnections of global financial, economic, and political networks ensure that the effects of such events ripple around the world.

Read the full article at S+G

Scottish Historian Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity

http://www.ted.com Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves.

Scottish Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture, call them the 6 killer apps, that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable.

The West's 6 Killer Apps

The Great Divergence

Global Patent Registration

India launches World's cheapest tablet

India has already churned out the world's cheapest car and is now launching what's billed as the world's cheapest 7-inch touchscreen tablet.

The result of efforts by India's Ministry of Human Resource and Development to develop a low cost computing device that could be used by students across the country.

Aakash, or "sky" in Hindi, is set to be sold to students at the government's subsidised price of US$35.

The regular retail price of the tablet is expected to be around US$60 when the unit hits the shelves as a commercial version called the UbiSlate 7.

Wonder how many 'students' will sign up for this one!