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Stephen Warrilow Articles

Guest post by: Stephen Warrilow

Toxic Leadership and Change Management - How to Spot it, Deal With it and Avoid it - Click To Read Article
Toxic leadership is all about the abuse of power and its destructiveness. In change management terms, having anyone in a leadership or a management position in your organisation who displays these characteristics is like a poison that needs to be identified and eradicated at the earliest opportunity. There are a number of defenses to toxic leadership...

Transformational Leadership Theory - The 4 Key Components in Leading Change & Managing Change - Click To Read Article
Transformational leadership theory is all about leadership that creates positive change in the followers whereby they take care of each other's interests and act in the interests of the group as a whole. James MacGregor Burns first brought the concept of transformational leadership to prominence...

Situational Leadership Theory in Change Management - Different Strokes For Different Folks - Click To Read Article
Given the catastrophic 70% failure rate of all change management initiatives, the quality of leadership exercised is clearly a significant component in reducing this risk. In essence, situational leadership theory emphasises 2 areas.

Leadership Styles - What is Most Effective in Leading Change? - Click To Read Article
What are the leadership styles that are most effective in leading change and especially in the current environment? Ultimately, the quality of leadership that you provide is one of the top 5 factors that will determine whether you really do succeed and realise the benefits with your step change initiative - or whether -to put it bluntly - you join the long list of 70% failures.

Strategic Leadership Questions - 10 Key Things to Get Right Before Initiating Change - Click To Read Article
Before starting out on your change management initiative - some strategic leadership questions to ask yourself. This list is not exhaustive but is intended as an aide-memoire to kick start your thought processes and to help you avoid the 70% failure rate.

Benefits of Change Management - Are There Any? By Stephen Warrilow Platinum Quality Author - Click To Read Article
Are there actually any real tangible benefits of change management? Are there any strategies for managing change that can identify and deliver the benefits of change management?

ADKAR Change Model - An Evaluation of Its Strengths and Weaknesses - Click To Read Article
The ADKAR change model was first published by Prosci in 1998. Prosci is the recognised leader in business process design and change management research, and is the world's largest provider of change management and reengineering toolkits and benchmarking information...

Kurt Lewin - The Iceman Cometh! How to Manage Change - Freeze - Unfreeze - Freeze - Click To Read Article
In the early 20th century, the psychologist Kurt Lewin developed the model - known as "Lewin's Freeze Phases" - and which still forms the underlying basis of many change management theories models and strategies for managing change. In my view there is value in Lewin's model in that recognises that (a) people are "stuck" or attached to "how things are" and thus potentially resistant to change, and (b) that there are stages to change process and the change experience.

How to Give Negative Feedback Constructively - Why It's Important in Business and Crucial in Change - Click To Read Article
In general business management knowing how to give negative feedback constructively is an important skill, but in change initiatives this is critical. This is all about translating vision and strategy into actionable steps. People will make mistakes and they will get it wrong.

Leadership Styles - the Amazing Story of the Hawthorne Effect - Click To Read Article
I have long held the view that successful strategies for managing change and the leadership styles that support those strategies are people centric rather than totally process oriented. Whilst undertaking research for a section of my website I came across a very interesting experiment.

Incremental Change - Or Step Change? The Biggest First Decision in How to Manage Change - Click To Read Article
I often get asked the question: "In your experience, what is the single biggest issue affecting directors who are considering or embarking on a change initiative?" This is good question and hard to answer because there are several key things that need to be addressed. But the single biggest early decision is to decide how to handle the change...

Merger Failures, Value Destruction and Cultural Conflicts - and How to Avoid Them! - Click To Read Article
There have been endless studies over the past 30 years to explore the reason for merger successes and merger failures. The overwhelming evidence is that over 70% of the time, mergers do not create synergies and shareholders of both companies involved do not see gains in shareholder value.

Define Leadership - The Missing Key Success Factor in Change Management - Click To Read Article
How you define and exercise leadership in the present climate will be a significant determinant in your organisation's fortunes - and especially in the context of change management. But so often in change management situations the emphasis is on the process and the management of the situation and not the leadership...

Practitioners Masterclass - Leading Your People Through Change, Putting it All Together - Click To Read Article
The full title for this article is "Practitioners Masterclass - Leading your people through change, putting it all together and managing the whole messy business". For the vast majority of us, change as something-to-be-resisted and avoided is the "default setting". Much of what we do as human beings is motivated by this inbuilt need to keep things as they are - to preserve the boundaries around "my life" - to preserve my survival, my safety and my comfort.

Why Use a Change Management Consultant? - Click To Read Article
Why use a change management consultant? This is a very good question because unless you are very clear about exactly what sort of help you need I would just simply say don't...

The Tao of Change - Zen and the Art of Change Management - Click To Read Article
We are so naturally focused on the "left brain", structured, analytical aspect of change and how we manage it - it's as though it's our hard-wired default setting. Maybe there is another dimension, to how we interact with change - a more "right brain" approach that allows us to experience a wider view and that demands a high level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence? Could it be that how we are, is as important as how we do it?

The Blueprint - What Actually is the Point of All This Change? Why Are You Doing it? - Click To Read Article
The Blueprint is just a fancy term for a description of how your organisation is going to look after the step change. As you create a programme, the more detail and clarity you have about this, the greater the chance you have of being able to communicate it to your staff and customers - and the higher the possibility that you will actually achieve it.

Organisational Culture - Will Over-Ride Education, Intelligence and Common Sense - Click To Read Article
Organisational culture is the single biggest determinant of how an individual will behave within a business or organisational environment. It will over-ride education, intelligence and common-sense...

Leadership Styles - A Lesson From Warzone Afghanistan - Click To Read Article
How do you motivate people living with the constant insecurities engendered by the current economic climate? How do you lead people through change in times of extreme and turbulence? In tough times people are capable of doing extra-ordinary things and of enduring previously unbearable privations - if their hearts are in it...

Leadership Styles - 3 Key Lessons From the Hard Man Who Found His Heart - Click To Read Article
I am constantly on the look out for interesting and informative stories and illustrations of leadership styles that support successful strategies for managing change - and especially ones that are people centred as well as process focused. In the course of recent research I came across the very interesting story of the man of nails who found his heart...

Leadership Styles - 5 Tips From the Guru - Click To Read Article
Sometimes I feel like the guy who's climbed the distant Himalayan peak to sit at the feet of the guru and discover the keys to the meaning of life the universe and everything. In my view, in the world of change management and leadership and inspirational motivation Jon Katzenbach, CEO of Katzenbach Partners, is such a man. He has built a career out of figuring out how the to inspire people...

Leadership Theories - What Does it Take to Be an Effective Leader? - Click To Read Article
There are more leadership theories than you can shake a stick at. Theories have evolved from "Great Man" and "Trait" theories to "Transformational" leadership - each with a different set of dynamics, contexts and focus. Here is an overview of leadership theories - but first here are 2 quick questions for you: (1) see if you can spot which applies to Genghis Khan and which applies to Mother Theresa; and (2) try to figure out which of these theories best describes the style you feel would be most appropriate for leading your change initiative...

Kubler-Ross - How to Deal With the Pain of Change - The Change Roller Coaster - Click To Read Article
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was a Swiss physician/researcher who undertook seminal work on the grief process. Many regard her as the mother of the modern hospice movement. In case you are wondering what all this has to with change management and strategies for managing change, the connection is quite simply that her model [though evolved within a clinical environment] was found to have a far wider application to people experiencing any bad news...

How to Manage Change - Tell Your People Why the Need For Change - Click To Read Article
How to manage change - and at the speed of change? How to deal with the turbulence? This is challenging and of all the current strategies for managing change it's a perspective that is increasingly relevant in the current climate.

How to Manage Change - 8 Guiding Principles From John Kotter - Click To Read Article
There are many theories about how to manage change. Many come from change management guru, John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School. Kotter introduced his eight-step change process in his 1995 book,"Leading Change." There are many aspects to Kotter's 8 principles of how to manage change that resonate with, and are totally consistent with, the holistic and wide view perspective of a programme based approach to change management...

Barriers to Effective Communication in Change Management - But Do They Feel What You Are Saying? - Click To Read Article
The single biggest barrier to effective communication in a change management situation is quite simply the disconnection between the change leader and those who are or will be impacted by the change. Here are 5 proven barriers to effective workplace communication in change management.

3 Simple Questions to Lead People Through a Change Transition - by William Bridges - Click To Read Article
William Bridges focuses on the transitions and the psychological changes that lie behind significant organisational change. Bridges draws the important and frequently overlooked distinction between change and transition. Bridges sees change as situational and transition as psychological. He poses these 3 simple questions...





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