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Yahoo’s move aims to make up for years of missing out on the growth of social networks and mobile devices.
Excerpts:
The deal would be the largest acquisition of a social networking company in years, surpassing Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram last year.
Tumblr has over 108 million blogs, with many highly active users. For Yahoo and its chief executive, Marissa Mayer, buying Tumblr would be a bold move as she tries to breathe new life into the company. The deal, the seventh since Ms. Mayer defected from Google last summer to take over the company, would be her biggest yet.
It is meant to give her company more appeal to young people, and to make up for years of missing out on the revolutions in social networking and mobile devices.
News from Deb:
The 5 step process allows leaders to look at the change from a number of different perspectives
Via the Change Samurai
"Steven Poole drills down into the strangled vocabulary of office jargon. Only if you have the core competencies will you be able to action the key deliverables ..."
The less said of the mouth-full-of-pebbles construction "actionables", the better.
'Antifragile' is a celebration of risk and randomness and a call to arms to recognize and embrace antifragility.
Many readers misunderstand Taleb’s core message. They assume that because Taleb writes about unseen and improperly calculated risks, his objective must be to reduce or eliminate risk. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Antifragile is a celebration of risk and randomness and a call to arms to recognize and embrace antifragility.
Rather than reduce risk, organize your life, your business or your society in such a way that it benefits from randomness and the occasional Black Swan event.
Taleb’s own life is a case in point. He had the free time to write Fooled, The Black Swan and Antifragile because—in his own words—he made “F___ you money” during the greatest Black Swan event of our lifetimes, the 1987 stock market crash.
...Taleb’s trading style is antifragile, had the 1987 crash never happened, Taleb would not have been materially hurt. His trading style puts little at risk but allows for outsized returns.
"Embracing change requires you yourself to experience the changes you’re asking your organization to undergo."
Our client is now desperately hoping his division’s leaders will embrace change, maybe even a Blue Ocean Strategy. They’ve reached a dangerous tipping point that could risk the future of their business.
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To ignite change, you need to do it yourself first.
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...if you truly want to see, feel and think in new ways, you have to fight your brain’s desire to stay put.
To ignite change, you need to do it yourself first. You need to recognize that new ideas come from trying new solutions in your own head and changing your brain’s focus. Then you can rollout the rest of the plan to your company.
"Tensions among senior staff in universities seem to be making the news on a regular basis. Examples include leader strife at Rutgers (blame), Penn State (cascade failure to deal with a crime) and University of Virginia (abrupt leadership goings and comings.)"
At the time of this post, we have the breaking story of not only the firing of a Rutgers basketball coach because of abusive behavior of his players, as shared widely on video, but also high level conflict of senior university administrators over who is responsible.
The interviews and documents reveal a culture in which the university was far more concerned with protecting itself from legal action than with protecting its students from an abusive coach.
Source: The New York Times
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…we are biased in every single situation. There’s no such thing as objectivity. ~ Erin White
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Leaders are the ones who set the tone. They can also easily miss things in the complexity of the organizational system. Enron, Johnson and Johnson, and the classroom cheating examples (listed in the post) are three of the sample stories that provide a good range of how challenging it is to consistently walk to talk of ethics in leadership.
Get the full story here:
The Happy Manifesto sets out a vision of happier workplaces. It is based on what organisations might look like if how they were organised and managed was decided by the people who are managed.
Examples:
Basics
1. Find a way to delight a customer today
4. Find ways to make working together more fun and sociable
Trust your people
5. Pre-approve: A new approach, a problem to solve – get an individual or group to find a solution and then implement it without checking back with you.
14. Pass the knowledge on to your people, so they don’t need things approved.
15. Have your people write their own job descriptions.
16. Let people choose their own job title (or abolish job titles altogether.)
Make your people feel good
39. Help your people find a real challenge, and support them to achieve it
40. Create a quiet space, where an individual’s presence is trusted, respected and allowed to just be for a while.
Related posts by Deb:
Author Ron Koller describes Kotter's classic article on Why Transformation Efforts Fail provided his "8 Errors" which became "8 Steps." Standing by themselves, these 8 steps have not curbed the high failure rate.
However, the steps can add value and lead to CHANGE SUCCESS if enhanced. This post describes the enhancement necessary to turn Kotter's Step 2 into a winner. It is based on 20 years of experience with change management success & a few change management failures. I hope you find it helpful.
Here's a nugget from the full post:
A truly representative advisory group is more powerful than you think. They are able to use their role as "representatives" to deliver realistic news to the leadership team regarding the employee and middle manager perspective of the change initiative.
"Karl Marx created very sophisticated theories of labor value already in 19th century. His view was that capitalistic system will lead to alienation of work. Of course his writings reflected his time..."
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...Specialization” ...It is the only thing that can happen. ____________________
Excerpts from the post:
As the company grows and more people are joining in the cooperative processes of product-making, only option to grow is the work division, specialization.
This is needed because of two things: - first of all there are new skills that are needed,
- secondly people need to have time to grow their expertise on these matters.
[It is] specialization” ...It is the only thing that can happen. There will be different functions like marketing, R & D, logistics > inside these functions there are further divisions...
The diagram on this post is of how a software organization might look like from the point of view of alienation.
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Alienation means less dependence to the actual results of the work and more dependence on the abstract knowledge.
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Click the post title to read the full post.
Related posts by Deb:
This is the first story in a series featuring Sara taking the path many seasoned change practitioners (Daryl Conner's intended audience) follow as they come to terms with how they work with clients. It kicks off a provocative, insightful series.
The basic storyline:
The hero pursues a series of adventures that takes her beyond the safety of her ordinary life in order to learn some vital lessons important to her and others.
In the process of her odyssey, she leaves her status quo, evolves into a wiser person, and returns to share her insights with those who could benefit.
....Sara had become “comfortably numb” without ever knowing what happened. Sample questions:
- Have you heard a wakeup call but been reluctant to heed the implications?
- To what degree has victimization played a part in any disillusionment you feel (or have felt) about your change work?
- To what degree has sovereignty played a part in avoiding or recovering from being a zombie practitioner?
Do you experience different forms of commitment in your change experience?
Do they follow these 3 forms of commitment? Ron's (author & researcher) main line of inquiry will be "which of these forms of commitment result in the highest level of sustainable performance?"
A related post from Deb, with Ron's links included:
"Three (3) intrepid law geeks, specializing in knowledge management, internet marketing and library sciences commented on Bradford Power expertise on process innovation and change."
Excerpt:
He commented on how change is 10% systems and processes and 90% people. So people is where you should focus your change resources.
Meet PAM:
P = Purpose. Employees that have a known, shared purpose are happier and more motivated, having an understood, shared goal will drive people to success.
A = Autonomy. People, especially in knowledge worker roles, do not like to be micro-managed. They prefer to be given a goal and some resources, along with the autonomy (and responsibility) to get it done.
M = Mastery. People also like to be masters of their domain (ref, Seinfeld). They enjoy being respected as a knowledgeable expert on a given subject.
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How about a step beyond the change agents and focusing on the people who matter most, frontline employees and managers, in working through change transition?
Read about the study that provides a conceptual bridge from change readiness (pre-change) to change implementation (post-change).
Related posts by Deb:
"Researchers found that more affective commitment is NOT better. They found that affective commitment (i.e. desire for a change) has a ceiling. "
Researcher Ron Koller finds that "human behavior is not linear. While you may think that is an obvious assumption, it is this linear mindset that drives change management failure."
Some theorists maintain that commitment to change and resistance to change are linked: “resistance to change and commitment to change are not separate but related change management issues representing a continuum.“
As the polar opposite of resistance, other theorists have argued for 3 types of commitment.
"...our focus in modern times on removing or minimizing randomness has actually had the perverse effect of increasing fragility."
Excerpts - Edge Perspectives with John Hagel:
...we all need to find ways to harness the power of randomness, volatility and extreme events to help us grow and develop more of our potential.
Focusing on Black Swans
Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about black swans [including] three books: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan and, now, Antifragile.
Black Swans, in Taleb’s parlance, are “large-scale unpredictable and irregular events of massive consequence.’
The latest book focuses on approaches that enable us to thrive from high levels of volatility, and particularly those unexpected extreme events.
It...willl...prove infuriating to most of our economic, educational and political elites, for he argues that these elites have played a major role in making us increasingly vulnerable to volatility and Black Swans.
...The quest for antifragility The real opportunity, in Taleb’s view, is to learn and grow from volatility and unexpected events – not to return to where you were, but to become even better as a result of the exposure and experience.
He makes an important point: biological systems in nature are inherently antifragile – they are constantly evolving and growing stronger as a result of random events. In contrast, man-made systems tend to be fragile, they are the ones that have a hard time coping with random events.
Taleb highlights a key paradox: our focus in modern times on removing or minimizing randomness has actually had the perverse effect of increasing fragility.
Related posts by Deb:
Change is constant. And technology has always been about change and convergence. "This is a wide ecosystem where everyone can participate and benefit."
Massive, global-scale change occurring now is happening at rates faster than anyone ever predicted.
How Big is “Everything”? The Internet of Everything will create $14.4 trillion in value at stake through the combination of increased revenues and lower costs in just the next ten years – creating an opportunity to increase global corporate profits by an estimated 21% over the next decade.
The five main factors fueling this value are:
- Asset utilization: $2.5 trillion in reduced costs
- Employee productivity: $2.5 trillion in greater labor efficiencies
- Supply chain and logistics: $2.7 trillion through eliminating waste
- Customer intimacy: $3.7 trillion through addition of more customers
- Innovation: $3.0 trillion through reducing time to market
Collaboration ties in throughout these factors. This is a wide ecosystem where everyone can participate and benefit: Small businesses, enterprises, service providers, system integrators, device makers are all critical to building out the connections and scaling experiences across every industry.
"There’s a reason why revolutionary movements so often originate in closed systems like college campuses."
You don’t need to convince everybody, just a local majority. Once you’ve attained that, the idea can spread to other clusters through the strength of weak ties and before you know it, the movement is gathering steam.
Majorities don’t just rule, they influence, to a much greater extent than most people would think.
...Also, the strength of your community isn’t a function of the number of your followers, but in their relationship to each other. Once again, it’s not the nodes, but the network that’s really important.
"After facing difficulties attempting to transform a group of twelve skilled people into a self-organized agile team, Ove Holmberg learned some valuable lessons on what it takes to implement agile within an organization."
Excerpts:
1. Decide if Agile Is Right for Your Organization
The agile mentor is one tool for building up this knowledge if you are not sure or need facts or success stories to support your approach.
The agile mentor...builds up your confidence as an agile manager and helps you take small agile steps toward your self-organized team and your new role as an agile manager. ...(Get) an agile mentor early on in the project.
2. Get Managers’ Buy-in with Data
The State of Agile Development Survey 2010 (Version One) states that the top two reasons for companies not fully adopting agile methods are: “management opposed to change” and “loss of management control.”
3. Get an Excited Team; Get Rid of the Slackers
...I should have formed my new team. ...I discovered the biggest defect in agile: It is assumed that people, by default, are skilled, disciplined, and willing to self-organize. The real world isn’t so. Related posts by Deb:
The Mount Rushmore of Change Management - the big four: John Kotter, Daryl Conner, Linda Ackerman Anderson & Jeff Hiatt
From Daryl Conner, a two-part definition including:
- Its focus in not on "what" is driving change (technology, reorganization plans, mergers/acquisitions, globalization, etc.),
- but on "how" to orchestrate the human infrastructure that surrounds key projects to that people are better prepared to absorb the implications affecting them.
Disrespectful behaviour and their effects...can be changed by establishing what Dr. Dutton calls “high quality connections ”or HQCs for short.
What a way to look at a tipping point for behavioral change, from abundance instead of from deficiency.
According to researcher Jane Dutton from the University of Michigan, disrespectful engagement depletes energy and thus motivation and commitment and may lead to burnout.
In the journal Stanford Social Innovation Review, she illustrates some cases of disrespectful behaviour and their effects, and then outlines how such behaviours can be changed by establishing what she calls “high quality connections”.
These pathways are (excerpted): - Respectful engagement: being there ...and really listening.
- Task enabling: help another person being successful, ...find out what other person’s goals are.
- Building trust: making the first step that signals that you are ...trustworthy
- Playing: inviting the other person for a kind of game
"Gail talks with author Eric Ries about innovation, specifically around when it’s time to pivot and how fast you have to decide.”
Blog post author Gail Severini recently had an insightful conversation with author Eric Ries about innovation, specifically around when it’s time to pivot and how fast you have to decide.”
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“The problem is that vision, product, and strategy came to us all together in a flash.” _______________________
Gail says:
Don’t underestimate Eric Ries. Don’t say (like I did), “He looks so young. What could he know?”
Excerpts: “A pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision…it is not giving up on the vision … it is not a change in the product.
We change the product all the time.”
“The problem is that vision, product, and strategy came to us all together in a flash.”
“The reason it is so painful to pivot is because it requires us to give up some elements of what we thought we would be doing…”
Transformational leaders and change: ...If your workers won't change, maybe you should.
Through their behavior, transformational leaders, foster change as an element of education, growth, experimentation, and, ultimately, change acceptance. This bears fruit in the minds of our employees: - psychological freedom,
- engagement in the thinking parts of the job, and
- systematic organizational approval.
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..It's the human touches, combined with all the formal systems that build confidence." ...be positive and avoid negativity, get to know people.
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Transformational leaders are intuitive experts at motivating followers to see the collective purpose of their jobs. Understanding purpose should be a sought after identifier for members of any organization, whether the boss-types comprehend it or not.
Source: http://t.co/kyBESMLC)
Related articles by Deb:
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The 7th and biggest deal - Yahoo acquisitions. The stock market is not liking it --today that is.
Now the biggest challenge yet, for Marissa Mayer,culture change at Yahoo AND smart connection with the hip, youthful Tumblr and their 108 million blogs, with many highly active users. Wordpress watching at the gate.
I do like my venerable, old fashioned Flickr.com photo account. Yet if well handled, the coolness of Tumblr could make a good things happen at Flickr. Challenge: the account owners are quite a bit different. ~ Deb
More change bound to show soon if this biggest, hip buy of Tumblr has any effect on the venerable Yahoo. ~ Deb