They are very small from up here, almost like ants
Top blog posts from 2012, from number 5 to number 1, a follow-up from Top 10 blog posts for 2012, 10 to 6
5. Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; stakeholder analysis template —
If I was to chart the blog like a top 40 countdown I would say, “moving up one spot from last year: stakeholder analysis … “.
This is 1 of 3 blogs on Scope that lands in the 10 most read of the 2012.
Link to download Stakeholder Analysis Template – fully editable Excel .xls file via Amazon Web Services
This post is 1 of 5 posts in the Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success.
I have built SharePoint portals to manage change and project work. I have turned my three Excel templates for impact, stakeholder, and communication planning into SharePoint lists and forms.
These same templates in SharePoint are easier to work with and allow more data sorting and trending.
Currently looking for a way to export each SharePoint list and post them as files anyone can import into their SharePoint site. If anyone has a suggestion to jumpstart the effort, connect through these comments. Update 04/2013: SharePoint Impact Analysis list
4. Change management bottom up or top down —
Turn the best practice of change starting from the top upside down.
Why? Because it rarely gets to the heart of what is needed.
Change, by any measure of accomplishment, requires majority adoption. Leaders can model what adoption looks like and can threaten what adoption will be, but leaders can never be the majority.
Corporate culture is the nervous system of an organization. Without understanding what makes your Clan or your Hierarchy tick, you’ve missed an opportunity to build a plan that marries culture’s organizational glue. Because knowing culture helps build “the way things get” done into the plan. Change management is not about compliance.
Would you rather have someone who complies with a plan or someone who advocates a plan?
3. Mergers and acquisitions failures are project management failures —
So, let’s buy a company. Why not, we can take the effort to try to build capability that our culture may never deliver on, we can outsource our ability, or we can buy a capability or market and leap frog the effort.
Sounds easy. But if we look at an M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) deal as a project we start to look at the fatal flaw of most M&A deal.
So if, roughly, 70% of all project fail, what is the failure rate for M&A deals?
Oh, M&A failures are a large percentage, indeed, a majority of deals – but, perhaps “synergy” is not the objective of the deal. Perhaps the banker fees and arrogance of the deal makers is what the M&A world is all about. Because if M&A deals were handled as projects this failure rate would be neither tolerated nor acceptable.
Well, then there is that niggling little issue of culture meld between acquiring and acquired that should have factored in the evaluation. Perhaps the human capital risk is the real risk beta in M&A deals.
Link to download Impact Analysis Template – fully editable Excel .xls file via Amazon Web Services
2. Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; impact analysis template —
Impact. What happens to people around you when you take action.
So, if a project does only 1 of 2 things: either create something new or improve something old, then, by default, a project impacts people and you have to start with impact if you want to understand both the project challenge and the change management challenge.
This post, again, continues to find resonance, though written in 2010.
1. This social media fad will ruin organization development —
Well, number 1, for the 2nd straight year, a post on the friction between social media and organization development.
Why does this hold such interest for a post, again, originally written in 2010?
Here are some of the post’s comments:
By Greg Krauska:
“choosing and developing people should be part of the work. Yet many business units get focused on THEIR transactions and view people as mere plug-in components.
“In the strongest organizations I have seen, people and org development are integrated. OD figures out how to become a strategic partner that enhances performance without unnecessarily disrupting the positive momentum that may exist. Serve as a positive example, and let people copy their actions.As for communication, purpose comes first, the tools come second.
“If social media is the best tool for the purpose, then use it. If a face to face conversation is most effective, then have it.”
“It gets exhausting trying to get OD folks to engage in Social Media when there is so much opportunity for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and business development!!! How do you maintain the energy?”
Perhaps there are really, REALLY, resistant folks that hope social media goes away, perhaps there are people that find this word combination meets their Google search. I am not sure, but I remain appreciative to being found.
Top 10 postscript: When I think of the Top 10 blog posts for 2012, I should have renamed this top posts of 2010. As none of my 2012 or 2011 posts are viewed more than 2010 posts. I guess it was a very good year.
I can, also, continue to view what I wrote in 2010 remains relevant today.
So, should I retire now and live off 2010 residuals?
Is there nothing pertinent left for me to say?
Or, perhaps I should view the 2012, top 10, most viewed as examples of topics I should explore more completely.
Compare to: Top 10 blog posts for 2011, 5 to 1
Compare to: Top 10 blog posts for 2013, 5 to 1
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