Transforminator — thoughts about transformation and change leadership
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Be a transformation shepherd
My wife’s love of animals occasionally takes us to a sheepdog trial. This is a competition for shepherds and their border collies entailing the herding and moving of sheep through a course, splitting the large group, then penning the smaller of the two new groups. It always strikes me as eerily similar to transformation and…
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AI Will Probably be a Productivity Bust
Before we get to the bold productivity prediction, know where I’m coming from… I am of two minds on Artificial Intelligence: the large language models of Chat GPT and so forth. Like some of those eminent in the field, I think AIs may represent a mortal threat to humanity. Even if the computers do not…
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Productivity: the no. 1 digital transformation shortfall
I have nothing against digital transformation imperatives or the millions of dollars and hours put toward it over the past decade. It was and remains an essential foundation of 21st-century value production. Picking up on a recent post, I will say that if anything the job is not done. Productivity Recognition: Digital Transformation’s final frontier…
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Involuntary buy-in: the truth about change
I know it’s received wisdom, even catechism that everyone in any organization can and should be bought in to change. I know this is essential to address resistance, often sounding like, “If they only knew better… we can help get them there by informing, educating…” I know within organizations we’re, “Not dealing with 5-year-olds,”…
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Unlocking Change: Embrace Forward & Backward Lookers
A recent experience crystalized for me an essential, binary nature of organizations: some people look forward, some backward. There ought to and will always be both in any given organization. That there might be all one kind or the other is unlikely. More probable is overrepresentation or, at the least, an unbalanced influence or control…
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Failing Productivity? What About All That Digital Transformation?
The Canadian character lends itself to millennialist productivity flagellation (e.g., recent Globe & Mail-only: Canada’s declining productivity streak adds to inflation problem, The productivity problem in Canada’s economy is really a marketing and sales problem, Canada has a productivity problem. The solution is training, not factories, one expert says, Canada’s productivity lag could be helped…
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ESG: A Moral and Survival Imperative
In a previous essay, I declared ESG to be a crock. The message was adorned with a lovely illustration intimating a poop emoji. I stand by it but believe an elaboration is required. Relatively fewer readers picked up on the defeated futility in the assessment than those who sincerely piled on to declare ESG a…
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What’s Next for Government Transformation?
Government and public administration transformation typically involve efforts to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness of government services and operations. Efforts usually aim to leverage technology and modernize administrative processes to better serve citizens. Often, it’s a generational effort to clear the accretion of process, policy, and regulatory barnacles. Recent Government Transformation Focus Areas…
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ESG: A Full Crock to be Balanced Carefully
Introduction Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors have gained significant traction as a benchmark for evaluating corporate responsibility and sustainability. While its proponents herald ESG’s potential to drive positive change, let’s critically examine its efficacy and address the fundamental challenges that render it doomed to failure. In fact, one only has to consider the…
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Social Transformation: Will It End Well?
There has been significant social transformation of the West in recent years. Here is some evidence to support this claim: Changing attitudes towards social issues One of the most significant social transformations of recent years is the change in public attitudes towards social issues such as same-sex marriage, gender identity, and racial justice.…