“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

William A. Ward

A recent study suggests that there is a statistically significant link between CEO family deaths and the companies’ profitability over a decade¹. These researcher identified 6,753 deaths occuring to CEOs and family members–1,015 corresponded to CEOs, 282 to children, 733 to partners/spouses, 1,364 to in-laws and 3,061 to parents. A link between CEO family deaths and significant economic decline of the company (operating returns on assets) was statistically significant. The biggest effects were cases where the CEO had only a single child and the smallest effects were deaths of in-laws.

Are Leaders Who Spend for Luxury Good for Shareholders?

How does the personal spending of CEOs (real estate in particular) affect the economic performance of a company? Professors David Yermack and Crocker Liu studied major real estate purchases of just about every top executive in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index². They found pretty convincing statistical evidence that the financial performance of companies decreases when CEOs purchase large homes and real estate. They suggest that these purchases are related to “executive entrenchment”and “foreshadowing poor future stock performance.” The good news is that they didn’t find that buying a house near a golf course or the water have a statistically significant impact on financial performance.

Do MBA Professors Make Good Leaders?

Do MBA professors who teach about leadership and organizational development really understand how to manage talent in organizations? Sure, some consult and most publish but are they really a role model for leadership–or should they be?

A new study by Jiang & Murphy analyzed the performance of 215 executives who were former business school professors³. Their results suggested that companies with former business school professors now as executives demonstrated significantly higher financial performance than non-former professors as executives. They didn’t find any differences in company performance between executives who were professors in the highest ranked business schools compared to those in non-ranked schools.

I’m not sure what you can do to prevent family health problems of senior leaders but apparently you can impact the “bottom line” by recruiting relatively lower paid management faculty and putting them up in corporate apartments at least during their first 18 months of on-boarding……Be well…..

Technorati Tags: teaching, MBA, shareholder return, CEO success, Envisia Learning, Envisia Tools, coaching, leadership, talent management, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Bennedsen, M., Perez-Ganzalez, F. & Wolfsenzon, D. (2007) Do CEO’s Matter? [↩]
2. Liu, C. & Yermack, D (2007). Where are the shareholder’s mansions? CEO’s home purchases, stock sales and subsequent company performance [↩]
3. Jiang, B. & Murphy, P. (2007). Do business school professors make good executive managers?. The Academy of Management Perspectives. 21, 29-50 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Government Training

Competencies: leadership, managing change, process improvement skills, financial leadership, interpersonal skills, self-development

Who benefits: high ranking federal employees

Consultant Usage: doubtful

What’s it about? Why are you reading this blog?  It is New Year’s Eve.  Shut it down, go party, be with friends, have fun, be merry, dance into the new year.  But please don’t spend the last day of the year glued to your computer.

There are two days a year when Bloggers get a free pass to go wild and be irresponsible: December 31 and April 1.  Today being December 31, I choose to be totally irrelevant and if I offend anyone, tough hits.  Off I go in my imagination….

We need a better year than this one.  Can’t afford a repeat of the mistakes of the past 12 months.  So let’s get the new bosses off to an appropriate training program and get it right the first time!  (And some transition training for the old bosses.)

There is a training firm in the Washington, D.C. area by the name of Management Concepts.  While their training is generally open to any interested person, the do specialize in training for employees of the federal government.  With the big changes coming up next month, I thought I might match some of their courses to some of the Players on the big scene.  Just trying to be helpful.  So here are my recommendations:

To the new President –- Leading and Managing Change

To the new Secretary of State — Managing Stakeholder Relationships

To the new Secretary of the Treasury — Effectively Managing Financial Resources

To the continuing Secretary of Defense — Interpersonal Skills: Developing Effective Relationships

To the new Director of Homeland Security — Improving Organizational Systems and Processes (especially at airports)

To the old President -– Post-Retirement Work Transition

To the old Vice President — Emotional Intelligence 360-Degree Assessment

Well, that’s all folks.  Happy end of the year holiday season to all of you and thanks for reading this Blog.  Catch you next year.

Technorati Tags: leadership, financial leadership, interpersonal skills, self-development, managing change, transitions, interpersonal skills, 360 degree assessments, retirement, process improvement, stakeholders, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

“I’m not asleep… but that doesn’t mean I’m awake”

Author Unknown

We all seem to be working longer and harder with health, sleep and mood being affected.

Research by Sylvia Ann-Hewlett and Caroyl Luce show that 62% of high earning individuals work more than 50 hours per week, 35% work more than 60 hours a week and 10% work more than 80 hours¹. Their findings suggest that more than 70% of professionals reported not getting enough sleep.

Our own research with our stress and health assessment called StressScan allows us to also take a look at just how sleep deprived talent today is.  One of the scales is called Sleep/Rest and is measures both quantity and quality of sleep.  In a recent analysis of over 686 leaders, approximately 30% reported receiving less sleep than required because they stayed up too late or had to get up too early.  Almost 30% reported that they had difficulty falling or staying asleep that also resulted in a sleep deficit.  I guess there is nothing like a third or more of our work force coming to work sleep deprived–I just hope these employees aren’t flying my planes, operating my nuclear plants, performing my surgeries or making critical decisions that impact my health and welfare.

Leaders and others know that the sleep-deprived are significantly more moody, miserable and just not much fun to be around. New research from UC Berkeley using MRI technology helps explain why for the first time.

The study is the first to show exactly what areas of the brain are affected by sleep deprivation².

In the UC Berkeley study of 26 young adults, half of the subjects were kept awake for 35 hours straight and the other half were allowed a normal night’s sleep in that same time period. Then all of the subjects were hooked up to an MRI and shown a number of images while the researchers monitored what happened in their brains as each image was shown.

The sleep-deprived subjects had a significant activity in the amygdala (the section of the brain that puts the body on alert to protect itself and control emotions) and simultaneously activity slowed down in the prefrontal cortex, which controls logical reasoning. However, subjects who had gotten a full night of sleep showed normal brain activity.

Americans are among the most sleep-deprived people in the world with 40% of Americans getting less than seven hours of sleep a night, according to a 2005 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, and 75% reported having some sort of sleep disorder one or two nights a week (http://www.sleepfoundation.org/).

What this means for most people is that a sleepless night or very poor quality of sleep can cause employees to overreact to emotional challenges that they would otherwise be able to tolerate without any trouble. In research from my colleague and friend Dr. Mark Rosekind of Alertness Solutions has shown that just a few hours of sleep less than you need has a significant impact on mood, psychomotor function and memory even if you believe you are functioning at 100%.

So, look out if you have sleep deprived talent and leaders who lack emotional intelligence — their amygdala already is compromised….Be well…

Technorati Tags: insomnia, sleep, fatigue, depression, sleep disorders, fatigue countermeasures, REM, NREM, circadian rhythms, stress, health, job burnout, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Hewlett, A. & Luce, C. (2006). Extreme jobs. The danagerous allure of the 70-hour workweek. Harvard Business Review, December 2006, pp. 1-12 [↩]
2. Yoo, S., Gujar,N., Hu,P., Jolesz, F., & and Walker, M. (2007). The human emotional brain without sleep — a prefrontal amygdala disconnect. Current Biology. Vol 17, R877-R878, 23 October 2007 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Get Rid of the Performance Review!

Competencies: performance management, performance appraisal

Who benefits: managers/supervisors, employees, organization

Consultant Usage: organizational development and human resource development

What’s it about?  One of my least favorite authors has written a short article about one of my least favorite topics.  Oddly, the results are favorable.

The author is arrogant and presumptuous.  The topic is distasteful.  Yet the end result is something I have advocated for over three decades (yes arrogant author, you are far from the first to think of this topic).  

The topic is performance reviews/appraisals.  They don’t work.  Never have.  And at the risk of being labeled “lazy”, let me quote the author who nails it in this provocative paragraph:

“To my way of thinking, a one-side-accountable, boss-administered review is little more than a dysfunctional pretense. It’s a negative to corporate performance, an obstacle to straight-talk relationships, and a prime cause of low morale at work. Even the mere knowledge that such an event will take place damages daily communications and teamwork.”

He goes on to list a host of reasons why performance appraisals fail.  Most of his reasoning is valid, although he shows some real sloppiness when writes about “the contemporary performance-reviewing fad called ‘360-degree feedback’.”  Most folks who understand “360-degree feedback” know it works best as a developmental tool, not as an appraisal tool.  And “360” has been around for over 20 years, which is a lot of longevity for a “fad”.

His solution is a good one.  Performance previews.  Sit-downs to discuss the future and the mutual responsibilities both parties.  Focus on the future, which is, after all, the only time zone we can do anything about.  It is also the only place that both parties are likely to get a real mutual agreement.

If you like the concept of the article, there is an excellent book that has been around since 2000 called Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What to Do Instead, which is reasoned, thoughtful, and well researched.  I highly recommend it if you are interested in the topic.

If you read either, would be very interested in your thoughts.

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: performance review, performance appraisal, performance management, feedback, coaching, performance previews, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

“Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”

Mark Twain

After being laied off, employees were 35% less likley than before to become actively involved or participate in church, community groups, and charitable organizations.  And, not many returned after they found a new position.

Investigators from UCLA and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor conducted the study based on 4,373 participants in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study¹. The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) has tracked a group of 1957 Wisconsin high school graduates for more than 45 years, gathering detailed information on their IQs, education, careers, psychological well-being, family and social lives.  

Social connection and support, both work-related and home/family/friend plays a prominent role as protective factor for many health related variables.  It’s a very challenging variable to really study as it can involve many aspects such as the source of received support, type of support (emotional or instrumental), enacted or received, utility of the support system and overall satisfaction with support received.

In our own research on the importance of social support and health using our Social Support scale from our StressScan assessment, we have found that change in one’s support network can impact both physical health and psychological well-being including our immune system ². 

We have tried to carefully construct a measure of social support within StressScan that measures 3 very unique aspects of this complicated concept:

• Availability of support from five different sources (boss/supervisor, others at work, spouse/partner, family members/relatives, friends)
• Use of the network system (either provided or received)
• Satisfaction with each in meeting your needs (informational, instrumental, emotional

We also assess the source of support because your use and satisfaction with each may be quite different:

• Immediate boss or supervisor
• Other colleagues or people at work
• Spouse, partner, lover or significant other
• Family members or relatives
• Friends

A high score on this scale suggests a global evaluation of having an adequate support network that you utilize and feel a sense of satisfaction with it.

It would appear that losing a job can not only be a career set back but also impact involvement and social connectiveness which, in turn, can impact our physical health and well-being.

Want to find out about your own social support network?  Contact us for a free trial of StressScan at support@envisialearning.com   Be well…..

Technorati Tags: StressScan, talent development, executive coaching, performance, layoff, social support, mastery, expertise, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack, envisia, deliberate practice

1. Brand, Jennie E. and Sarah A. Burgard. Forthcoming: Social Forces (2008). Effects of Job Displacement on Social Participation: Findings over the Life Course of a Cohort of Joiners [↩]
2. Schwartz, G.E., Schwartz, J.I., Nowack, K.M., & Eichling, P.S. (1992). Changes in perceived stress and social support over time are related to changes in immune function. University of Arizona and Canyon Ranch. Unpublished manuscript [↩]

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness”

Richard Carlson

News alert (in case you might have not known already) — Work-related stress can be a direct cause of clinical depression and anxiety among employees.

In our own personal stress and health assessment called StressScan we measure the hard driving, competitive and achievement oriented Type A behavior as one of the major scales. The majority of working professionals composing our extensive norm group (62.7%) report they tend to be hard driving and competitive at work and play and 49.4% report they feel hurried and pressured for time all of the time or most of the time. Finally, 44.4% report that their activites and schedule push them to be as busy and active as possible stretching them to their limits of their energy and capacity most or all the time.

A recent finding in Psychological Medicine finding comes from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, which has followed a group of 1000 children born in 1972-73 in Dunedin, New Zealand throughout their lives. The study subjects have been assessed at the ages of 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 26, and most recently at the age of 32, in 2004-05.

The study included 406 women and 485 men. All were asked at age 32 about their perceptions of work stress. In general, men reported higher psychological job demands, lower social support, and higher physical job demands than women.

High psychological job demands, such as long hours, heavy workload, or poor relations with one’s boss, were found to be significantly associated with clinical depression, anxiety, or both in both women and men.

It was found that women who reported high psychological job demands (using a standard approach to measuring work load and decisional control over things on the job), such as working long hours, working under pressure or without clear direction, were 75 per cent more likely to suffer from clinical depression or general anxiety disorder than women who reported the lowest level of psychological job demands.

Men with high psychological job demands were 80 per cent more likely to suffer from depression or anxiety disorders than men with lower demands. Men with low levels of social support at work were also found to be at increased risk of depression, anxiety or both.

This study shows that high levels of workplace stress may be an important contributor to common mental disorders, such as depression and anxiety. These disorders certainly contribute directly to employer costs for medical claims, absenteeis, presenteeism and disability.

It’s seems so easy to just suggest individually based remedies to help employees cope more effectively with stress on the job. However, a recent review of stress management interventions suggests that inidivudally based approaches, without targeting the organization, are unlikely to have sustain impact over time¹.

Looking for a place to start?

In his book Primal Leadership, Dan Goleman states “Roughly 50 to 70 percent of how employees perceive their organizational climate can be traced to the actions of one person: the leader. More than anyone else, the boss, creates the conditions that determine people’s ability to work well.”

If that doesn’t work, there is always the Serenity Prayer….Be well….

Technorati Tags: stress, burnout, job demands, anxiety, depression, workload, pressure, ken nowack, envisia, kenneth nowack, StressScan, Envisia Learining 

1. Nowack, K. (2000). Occupational stress management: Effective or not?. In P. Schnall, K. Belkie, P. Landensbergis, & D. Baker (Eds.), Occupational Medicine: State of the Art Reviews, Hanley and Belfus, Inc., Philadelphia, PA., Vol 15, No. 1, pp. 231-233 [↩]

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.”

Karen Kaiser Clark

Looking for an easy, simple, reliable, and valid way to measure whether a coaching, training or consulting intervention has impact?

The “post-then-pre” method of self-report evaluation offers one solution for documenting behavior change. The data collection instruments are relatively easy to develop, use, and analyze¹.

Problems with Typical Approach to Evaluating Leadership Programs

A typical approach to evaluation has been to use a pretest-posttest research design to document behavior change. However, in certain types of self-report program evaluation, pretest-posttest comparison results may be an inaccurate assessment of impact because participants may have limited knowledge preventing them from accurately assessing baseline behaviors².

By the end of the program, their new understanding of the program content may have an impact on the responses on their self-assessment (this is referred to as a response shift bias). If a pretest was used at the beginning of the intervention, participants have no way to correct an answer at the end of the program if they made an inaccurate assessment at baseline.

The evaluation problem, then, is that a pre-assessment taken at the beginning of an intervention may be invalid because participants have limited knowledge in responding accurately to the questions being asked to respond to after the intervention has been completed.

Consider the following pre-assessment question for an executive coaching intervention: “Have you utilized a participative approach to involving your team in problem solving, decision making or planning processes?” To answer this question accurately, the respondent must have some idea what is meant by utilizing a “participative approach”.

An executive who doesn’t know exactly what is meant by “participative leadership” may tend to overestimate his/her behavior on some type of pre-assessment. After actually participating in the executive coaching program and learning about different strategies and approaches for including employees in problem solving, the participant can more validly answer the question.

Now suppose the executive has demonstrated an increase in applying more participative approaches with his/her team as a result of the coaching intervention. On any post assessment aimed at measuring this change in behavior, the executive reports the same level of utilizing participative approaches with his/her staff. The post-assessment level is accurate, but because the pretest was an overestimate (due to the executive’s lack of knowledge), it will appear that no change in behavior has occurred between pre-assessment and post-assessment.

Such an evaluation result makes it appear that the coaching had no effect on this type of behavior when, in fact, it significantly increased this leadership behavior.

Using the Post-Then Approach to Evaluation

The “post-then” evaluation design corrects this problem. The problem is handled by not providing any pre-assessment at the beginning of the intervention. Then, at the end of the intervention, the participant answers two questions. The first question asks about behavior as a result of the program (“Post” evaluation).

Then the participant is asked to report what the behavior had been before the program (“Then” evaluation). This second question is really the pretest question, but it’s asked after the program when the participant has sufficient knowledge and/or experience to answer the question validly. Research has confirmed that this “post-then” approach is a more valid way of evaluating interventions. These change scores also lend them selves to statistical analyses—you can utilize a paired sample t-test to determine whether changes over time are meaningful with most statistical packages.

The “post-then” design accounts for changes in learners’ knowledge and/or behavior by allowing participants to first report present behaviors (post); and then rate how they perceived these same behaviors just before taking the course (then pre). The retrospective pretest at the end of the program is more accurate because it’s answered in the same frame of reference as the post-assessment. Thus, the problem of what’s called “response-shift bias” in self-report, pre-post designs is minimized³.

Using a “post-then” evaluation design for self-reported behavioral changes can provide substantial evidence for intervention impact. Although a leadership example was provided here, the methodology can be adapted and easily applied to other behaviors, knowledge and attitudes. Using a “post-then” evaluation design greatly helps practitioners provide greater evidence about the impact of their interventions using a fairly simple, but powerful, self-report approach.

So, how much would you say you knew about this quick and powerful way to improve evaluation of leadership development programs before you read this blog? Be well…..

Technorati Tags: surveys, Envisia, Envisia learing, retention, talent management, engagement surveys, job satisfaction, worklife balance, job stress, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Nowack, K. (1986). Pre-post-then evaluation of a behavioral modeling approach to supervisory skills training. Performance & Instruction, 25, 14-16 [↩]
2. Metzoff, B. (1981). How to get accurate self-reports of training outcomes. Training & Development Journal, 35, 56-61 [↩]
3. Howard, G. & Daily, P. (1979). Response shift bias: A source of contamination of self-report measures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 64, 141-150 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Why Talent Is Overrated

Competencies: self-development, talent management, performance management

Who benefits: individuals with career aspirations, managers and supervisors of high potential employees, coaches

Consultant Usage: career development, career coaching, executive coaching

What’s it about? Two 22-year olds.  Recent college grads.  Hired by a large company along with a bunch of other guys (it was 1978).  They shared a cubicle, wrote and rewrote memos, and played waste-basket basketball with draft memos.  They did not demonstrate any ambition.  They did not have any visible career aspirations.  So begins this provocative article.

The author asks the question “What is talent?”.  Then the provocation begins: Is talent irrelevant?  Could it be? 

The author’s answer, for the most part, is yes, talent is overrated.  Read the article if you want the details, but his main hypothesis is that the cream rises to the top through a process called “deliberate practice”.  By this he means practice that is deliberately designed to improve performance.

It is something separate from hard work and practice-makes-perfect.  Deliberate practice is designed to push an individual just beyond his or her current capabilities.  It requires dedicated practice, but at a level outside of our comfort zone.  It is not maintaining current levels of performance!

For the cream to rise, certain elements kick in.  First, feedback from the outside is imperative.  Second, focus and concentration at exceptionally high levels are required from the inside – the kind of focus and concentration that can leave one exhausted.  It ain’t fun.  Fun is doing what we can already do well.  If it were fun, everyone would be doing it.  It means insistently seeking out activities that we aren’t good at.  Practice and feedback and practice and ….

There is a good summary of what deliberate practice means in work life: It is the janitor who maintains the building while figuring out how to eventually manage it. 

So what happened to the two 22-year old kids in the cubicle?  One was Steve Ballmer, now CEO of Microsoft; the other was Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric.  At some point they set their stretch goals, developed the self-regulatory skills common to high performers, and sought continuous feedback.  That’s what made them different than everyone else.  As for Tiger and Yo-Yo, you know who they are, you will have to read the article to see where they fit in!

If the article whets your appetite and you want more, the article was taken from the newly released book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: talent, talent management, deliberate practice, feedback, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts.  Facts can obscure the truth.”

Maya Angelou

The leadership and talent management “facts” just keep coming. In fact (no pun intended), thanks to some readers, I now have even more to share with you!  

1. Hay Group, a global management consulting firm in a recent study discovered that among 75 key components “trust and confidence in top leadership” was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction.

2. A recent survey of more than 300 small businesses conducted by the management consulting firm Six Disciplines Corporation found that the number one characteristic setting apart high and low performing companies was the strength of the senior leadership.  The second most common trait shared by successful small businesses was the ability to attract and retain quality talent and keep those working satisfied.

3. Data from the 2006 market study “High Potential Leadership Selection and Development” Institute of Executive Development and RHR International Question #5 revealed: “Which of the following characteristics/abilities do you think are most important for your organization’s future leaders to posses?  1) Strategic Thinking/Ability to Develop Others 50%; 2) Business Acumen/Knowledge 38%; 3) Ability to Manage Organizational Change/Relationship Building 29%; 4) Cross Cultural/Cross National Understanding 18%; and 6) Ability to manage the performance of others 17%.

4. More than half of global executives wish they could start over in a different career according to a recent 2007 survey by search firm Korn/Ferry.  People define their work as a job, career or calling—we are lucky if what we wind up doing is truly our “calling.”

5. According to RHR International, 40% to 60% of high level corporate executives brought in from outside a company will fail within 2 years based on their 2006 analysis of clients.  Those who do fail most often derail quickly sometime between 7 to 9 months in the job.

6. Last year there were 28,058 executive turnovers including board members and executives from CEO down to VP a 68% increase over 2006 according to Liberum Research analysis of North American public companies—of those 44% of the positions were filled from outside the company.

7. At large companies, chief financial officers are turning over at a rate of 22% a year according to Russell Reynolds Associates because CFOs are under extreme pressure in the regime of Sarbanes-Oxley and they are the face of the company to Wall Street.

8. In a recent Gallup Management Journal, 59% of employees in the US reported “not being engaged” and 14% were “actively disengaged” which Gallup describes as “undermining what their engaged coworkers accomplish.”

9. ISR 2007 research study reported that five of the largest Asia-Pacific economies including Australia, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand were included in the study of more than 3,000 “top talent”.  The study revealed that the region is full of “talent at risk” staff and Malaysia has the largest proportion (47%) of employees that define themselves as either disillusioned or actively disengaged.  Singapore ranked second with 40% followed by the other countries above 30%.

10. In recent Gallup survey, 80% of British workers reported that they lack commitment to their jobs with 25% being disengaged compared to only 12% in France. In Singapore, 17% of the talent reported being “actively disengaged” at work.

10. ISR also found that 88% of at-risk staff in China indicated they would leave their current positions while 92% of Australians and 95% of Singapore’s talent at risk planned to leave.

11. 81% of executives consider employee retention an important business priority compared to 41% in 2007 (Annual emploee turnoversurvey of more than 600 organizations TalentKeepers Inc.

12. According to a recent 2008 survey of 16,237 U.S. workers by Marietta, Ga.-based consultancy Leadership IQ, 47% of high performers are actively looking for new jobs, by posting and submitting their resumes and even going to interviews. Compare that to only 18 percent of identified low performers who say they are looking for new jobs, and 25 percent of middle performers who are actively searching, according to the findings.

All in all, emotions and attitudes might be more important than “facts”….Be well….

Technorati Tags: talent management, succession planning, coaching, executive coaching, executive development, surveys, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Managing personal, professional and organizational change

Competencies: change management, self-development

Who benefits: individuals, managers and leaders, organizational consultants

Consultant Usage: coaching, training, intrapersonal reflection

What’s it about? I am writing this posting from Mexico, beachside, and I am not as current with recent events as I might be stateside.  But I heard a rumor that there are some big changes coming in the United States come January.  I have friends who are extremely happy about recent events leading to this change.  I have other friends who are not. 

Since change is in the air whether you wanted it or not, I thought this week’s topic ought to be about – you guessed it – change.

If you are interested in change personally, one of my favorite and inspiring authors, Bill Bridges has updated his well-known book with an Audio CD of the same name: Managing Transitions, 2nd Edition: Making the Most of Change.  He calls this CD “Your coach in a box”.  It is all about the human side of organizational change.  I suppose it is aimed slightly more at managers and leaders, but I have always found his work to be intrapersonally satisfying.  If you are an organizational consultant and have not read or heard of his work, this is a must read or listen.

If you prefer to make it real personal, try his 2001 book, The Way of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments.

One of the best books on organizational change I ever read was the 1996 bestselling book Leading Change by John Kotter.  Still a good read if you ask me.  But I would like to stress his follow-up and just published book that expands on the first crucial step in his earlier formula: A Sense of Urgency.  It is about creating a sense of urgency to get people to actually see and feel the need for change. No urgency, no change!  Given the state of the world, the economy, the business impacts, it is a timely book.

And let me close with an oldie but goodie, my friend Terry Paulson (an oldie but goodie) wrote They Shoot Managers, Don’t They?: Managing Yourself and Leading Others in a Changing World  back in 1991.  It is filled with pithy advice that is just as good today as it was back then.  And it has a good dose of humor that may be just what is needed these days.

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: transitions, change, change management, managing change, managing self, managing others, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley