Tag: Change
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Decisions in the Middle: How DGs Move Beyond Advice to Action
Directors General (DGs) hold the pivotal middle ground of the federal public service. You are close enough to operations to know the realities, yet senior enough to influence strategy. In many transformations, the success or failure of implementation comes down to how DGs interpret their role: are you merely an advisor, or are you a…
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Everyone Nods But Nothing Moves: The Hidden Drag on Government Transformation
Transformation in government is never about technology alone, nor about bold political vision in isolation. At the highest levels of leadership—where Ministers and Deputy Ministers carry responsibility for both vision and execution—the challenge is subtler and more insidious. It’s the silent drag on change that arises when everyone around the table nods in agreement but…
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Transformation lessons from the Double Lift
At sheepdog trials, which I’ve written about before, there is a challenge called the Double Lift. The trials test shepherd and sheepdog to run a herd of sheep through a course and into a pen. The Double Lift is the challenge for champions that requires two groups of ten sheep be acquired from different parts…
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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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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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“Fear” of Transformation Outcome is Powerful
Do people fear transformation? Some yes, some no; but by-and-large people do not fear transformation. They may, however, dread imagined outcomes of a transformation. Even if they understand the need. Transformation and change are inevitable in any organization. Whether due to market conditions, technological advances, or internal restructuring companies must adapt to remain…
