Too old to change?

The Biggest Loser competition tonight was won by a 64 year old man who lost 177 lbs or close to 50% of his body weight! How did he do it? He said he got out of his head and just let his body do the work.

Who says you can't teach old dogs new tricks!

I will Employees and I will not Employees

I think there are some employees who will tend to say yes when their leaders asks things of them. These are people who are generally agreeable and will look for a way to get the new task/challenge done. While there are other people who will give some version of I will not: they will look for excuses why they can't; they will say yes but do nothing; or they will say yes and complain the whole way through.

I think this is by personality, not based on the situation. What do you think?

Examples of Memories that Limit Organizational Performance

I was watching a show last night on elephants in the Kalahari Desert in Africa that made me think of how memories can limit organizational performance.

Elephants were being tracked across the Kalhari desert through GPS necklaces. At one point, the elephants were stuck. They were running back and forth across one line of the desert in panic and stress, to the point of exhaustion. Why? It turned out that this herd of elephants had a long history (generations) of walking a certain route across the desert. That route was now blocked as people had developed the area. They were stuck because their organizational memory told them "Go this way" - so they just kept trying to run that way,l but when they got to the border of the homes, they turned around and ran back from where they came from. Then, later, they would run back towards the border. Again, they would stop and run back from where they came from. On and on all day this went until they were exhausted.

This made me think about how strong memories can be. How we all create patterns of behavior based on old memories. Maybe it is the memory of your relationship with your father or mother which unconsciously drives your relationship with your manager. Or maybe it is your memory of what you learned in graduate school about a certain way to do things that drives how you always handle certain business situations. Or maybe a whole department completes their process a certain way. It has worked this way for years. Now they have to change. Maybe they are not just not simply 'resistant to change.' Maybe the strength of the memory is just so strong that it drives them to do this process over and over, because it is all that they know...

What examples do you have of memories that limit organizational performance? Personal, Team or Organizational....

Total Transformation vs. Incremental Change

I heard Dr. Dean Ornish talking about the success of totally transforming your diet vs. making small steps. His research shows that people who completely and radically change their diet to a healthy diet to prevent heart disease or reverse it are much more likely to sustain the changes than people who make incremental changes after heart surgery. I also read about a Bain & Co study showing that companies that totally transformed by throwing out their senior execs and brining in new people had compelely turned around in 2 years or less with and average of 250% increase in stock price.

The implications for organizational change seem to be that better to make large bold moves than smaller ones. They will shake things up and create lasting change rather than the incremental changes of a new training program here or a new product there.