Executive Essentials Business Performance Excellence

The Economist on the challenges of change

Greg Williams — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:01:09 +0000

The real canary in the coal mine was intended to signal the presence of methane and/or carbon dioxide gas. Canaries were a sensitive indicator to gas build up and as long as it kept singing the miners could keep working. As soon as it stopped the miners knew to get out before something worse happened. [...]

Houston, we have a problem!

Greg Williams — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 05:27:38 +0000

The recent story on the BBC website about 24 suicides by employees of France Telecom over the past year or so is a dramatic reminder of the human dimension of organisations and the challenges of change. While disturbing, it isn’t that there are suicides at all, because the statistical analysis suggests this is within [...]

Manifesto

Greg Williams — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:52:50 +0000

We have the emergence of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) as significant economic forces; we want to transform to a low carbon economy in response to the issue of climate-change; the baby-boomers are retiring; economic competition is becoming more globalised; oh and lets not forget the global financial crisis which probably still has legs and the potential for a few more significant surprises. ... Operational effectiveness and strategy are both essential to superior performance ... but they work in very different ways - Michael Porter, What is Strategy, HBR (1996) Thirdly, I don't mean to suggest that everything stays the same and is sweetness and light: change is inevitable and pervasive.