Blog – For a change

Are you allowed to spread fear?

Of course not.

Duh.

But sometimes it seems that we go to the other extreme. That we are not allowed to share our fears, because they might spread.

That can never be the intention.

When are you allowed to create a division?

The word division is quite an issue right now.

That is strange. As if a division is automatically a problem. It depends on what exactly we mean by it.

How do we escape anger as a business model?

‘Cabinet must explain critical house of representatives evacuation from Afghanistan’

This is the first headline in my news feed this morning. A feeling of despondency overwhelms me.

Here we go again.

When is a conversation about change a waste of time? (and three questions you can then ask)

People who talk about change are rarely short of conversation material. But not every conversation about change leads to change.

We waste a lot of valuable time if we get stuck in abstractions, models, bullets and definitions. Then we lose ourselves in contemplation. Only the intellect is speaking, the feeling is on mute.

How do you combine agility with science?

Sometimes two statements are both truisms, but these truisms may clash. As with these two:

“We need to be agile”

“We need evidence-based change”

Because when we think of agility, we think of fast change and when we think of evidence-based change, we think of thinking before we start.

Where can they meet after all?

When can you help?

Nothing feels better than helping.

But sometimes it is better not to help. After all, your help could also make things worse. Then you help out, only to sigh afterwards:

“I just wanted to help.”

How do you assess a plan? (even if you don’t have a black belt)

It’s an annoying job.

Assessing a plan that someone else has made.

The master plan for strategy implementation. The grant application for the regional partnership. The sheets about the Transformation Roadmap.

How can you see if such a plan is good? Especially when it concerns a complex change? And even if it is written in the secret language of a method in which you are not certified?

How to deal with negative people (and with Facebook trolls)

They are everywhere.
Whiners. Criticasters. Denigrators.

What do you do with them?

What is organic change?

The term organic change can be heard regularly in many organisations. This of course has a lot to do with the fickleness and complexity that is typical of contemporary change.

What’s so hard is that the term is also a rich source of Babel-like confusion, which only increases the complexity of change.

So I wondered how we can prevent this confusion.

Does time heal all wounds?

There are few people who never experience a period when life hurts. One piece of advice these people often get is that they should ‘give it time’. And for this month’s blog I wondered whether this is true.

Is humour a change strategy?

Some time ago a manager came to me after a lecture. I had talked about change strategies and he was wondering where humour fits in. We had a pleasant talk about this. And then the cogwheels continued to turn about this.

In this month’s blog I would like to share my progressing insight with you. And this begins with the fact that there is not just one type of humour. There are various types and they all have a different effect.

What are manifestations of denial?

In a previous -dutch- blog I have called denial for agents of change an even greater challenge than resistance, if possible. This did not end my fascination with this phenomenon.