It’s not often I go to the gym at 6.30 in a morning, I usually prefer midday to give me a break during work.
But today I was up early, the sun was shining and I felt great. So a workout and a swim before work seemed a good idea.

I now regret not having been at this time before. The amount you learn about what’s happening in business is really interesting.
Makes the BBC’s Today programme look positively short of news.

For instance today’s headlines from the gym are:

“Kevin’s just not pulling his weight…”
and as he’s responsible for increasing sales and as they are targeted on a team result it’s not pleasing the rest of his team. The boss won’t find out till it’s too late to meet target because if he’s so stupid that he can’t see it himself then it’s his look-out.

“The new sales push will knock the competition for six”
A company has come up with a new product and pricing structure to steal some of the competition’s major clients in September. By the time the competition has leant what’s happening it’ll be too late for them to do much.

Preparing for the future
Having listened to all this news I wondered if the boss did know about Kevin, or was he relying on monthly statistics. If he’s relying on the sales stats he will have little chance of reversing the situation before targets become impossible to be met.

More imporantly, does the competition not know that they are about to have their sales attacked? If the new product line and pricing structure is as effective and destructive as anticipated then there will be a panic and a rush to “Fix the problem” in September. In my experience this will always be a costly and time consuming exercise.

The gym’s news confirms that It’s always worth having an early warning system to identify what the future might bring and obviously the Gym at 6.30 is a place I will be going to more often.

As for my early warning system…I think the picture below shows my future

I was talking to a group of managers earlier this week about increasing team productivity when one asked “What’s the latest thinking on this?” It didn’t surprise me as I’ve become used to team leaders and even CEO’s wanting to have the “Latest fix or fad” believing that it’s bound to be better than the previous ones.

Management can’t be like a diet fad
It’s like watching compulsive dieters trying the latest diet craze for a while before moving onto the next. Examples would be Total Quality Management in the 1980’s, more info

followed by process reenigineering and culture change. The difficulty for managers is implementing change so that it’s always beneficial to the organisation.

The expectation that the latest fad will increase profitability through competitive advantage can’t be true when every other company is adopting the same fad. I recently was interviewed by William Buist on this exact topic and a short clip from the YouTube video can be seen here  http:youtu.be/ij3nQcM9AV8

Resisting fads until they are proven to be useful might be a good strategy…but needs nerves of steel

Stephen Harvard Davis

I often find myself talking to team managers about the differences between “Change” and “Transition”.
The reason for the discussion is that so many people assume that they are the same.

In my experience nothing could be further from the truth and very simply:
Change: Is a physical move to a new place. (This includes move of office, new way of working, dieting, learning and so on).
Transition: Are the mental stages that people move through to arrive at the new place

The definition illustrates why some team leaders find it difficult to implement change when they have other people to lead along a pathway to change. One of the major problems that contributes to change failure is that the leader works through the transition before those being led are given time to do so.

More information on transition management HERE