Change programs are notorious for coming up short in achieving the results that were expected from them. Research indicates that only 16% of such change efforts are successful. Yet despite this poor performance, we rarely confront the constraints that cause us these stumbles. As a result, we're stuck with technical debt that is a drag on subsequent performance. It is almost like we enjoy pouring money down the drain.

Change initiatives usually promise revolutionary outcomes rather than evolutionary refinement. When we consider these alternative paths in politics and hockey, a pattern emerges:

When a company starts losing money, or a whole industry starts losing ground because of a new technology, most of us follow leaders who call for revolutionary change—even if no one really knows what change is needed. Leaders who advocate the status quo look like dinosaurs. Read more »

A timeline is a retrospective representation of a linear sequence of significant events which have occurred during the accomplishment of some activity. A timetable provides a corresponding, forward-looking series for pre-arranged events, and is often organized as a tabular list. Such timetables are used to plan and track such activities for performing and reporting on future work. Each of the events associated with these timelines and timetables may be comprised of either top-level milestones or more detailed inchstones. Read more »

To realize benefits from any competency-based strategy, everyone must have a common understanding of what it means to be competent, what is required to develop a competency, and how one can reliably assess whether an individual or an organization is competent or not. Read more »

I've been a fan of the methods of Edward Tufte for years; see his Engineering by Viewgraph  criticism of Powerpoint usage for an excellent example of his work. Samples of the risks inherent in poor visual communications (and how that can influence GroupThink) abound - see an example from the Iraq war here. On a more humorous note, there is always one of my favorites, the Gettysburg Address in Powerpoint. Read more »