EVOLUTION OF BPR

Slutty virgins, Gov. Palin and Human Capital management strategies

Posted on the September 8th, 2008 under Business Risk, Change Management, Organizational Transformation by Gregory Yankelovich

I want to start with a disclaimer for those who were attracted to this post by expectations of scandalous details from Gov. Palin’s past - you will be greatly disappointed, I don’t know of any. This is about building and managing high impact teams.

The noise, surrounding the appointment of Sarah Palin as the running mate on the Republican ticket, reminds me of a Richard Jeni skit about men who cannot make their mind whether they want a virgin or a slut and trying to find one who is both. Besides the fact that Richard was hysterically funny, he was a very powerful observer of human character because this type of behavior is not limited to just personal life. The current presidential campaign is another very good illustration of this phenomena, we seem to struggle with what we want more - experience or change.  We are scared of change (the great unknown) and disgusted with the status quo, so we want both.

The one who tries to sit on two chairs at once, most likely will end up on the floor.

I am more interested in this mysterious refusal of dealing with reality when it comes to managing change in a corporate environment, because that is where I live. Regardless of what you read in the job opportunity advertised for a new project, you will end up being asked whether you have done exactly the same thing before, with exactly the same tools in exactly the same environment a few times. Apart from the fact that it is probably impossible to honestly give a positive answer to such a question, why would you want to do the same thing over and over again and what would that do to your creativity? And no, the money is not a correct answer to the last question, because they don’t want to pay more than what you are already paid.

It takes many ingredients to navigate an organization successfully to a desired outcome, but the primary one is a well managed, high impact team which is capable of composing and executing scenarios of CHANGE from concept to reality. This business is a high risk/high reward type of undertaking and it is an uncomfortable process, but realistically speaking the alternatives are even more so. You can either plan and manage the change, or let it happen to you - there is no third choice.

From that perspective your best prospect to lead a change management team is someone who perhaps does not know your market, or your business, or your choice of tools, but who has never done the same thing twice. The one who likes to change and to learn, as uncomfortable as it is, does so because it does have reward - you are never bored.

I just found this to illustrate my point in http://changethis.com/50.01.Tribes (bolding is mine).

When the Los Angeles Philharmonic, one of the most prestigious in the world, went looking
for a new conductor, they had their pick of perhaps a thousand qualified individuals. These were people who were proven, tested, and world-class at doing the work of running an orchestra the traditional way.

They hired Gustavo Dudamel.
He is a twenty-six-year-old sensation from Venezuela whose résumé can’t compare to those
of his elder peers. He doesn’t have the proven abilities doing yesterday’s hard work. The Los Angeles Philharmonic realized, though, that they could always find someone to get that work done. What they needed was a leader to bring the organization to a new audience in a new way.

Stop for a second and consider the implications of this. From a thousand qualified conductors (who understood the status quo), the Philharmonic chose a newbie who wanted to challenge it.
Heretics discover this sort of success all the time.