Business Change Management

The October 26, 2020 New York Times article entitled “Colleges Slash Budgets in the Pandemic, With ‘Nothing Off-Limits,’” does not offer an encouraging outlook for higher education. The article says that every institution, large and small, is being forced to initiate budget cuts to close widening gaps in financial shortfalls. Why? Less students, less fees, less meal and dormitory dollars, and more expenses, accelerating a trend that was already in the making!

Public institutions increasingly forced to do more with less, driving up the price

Combine The Times article with one from Astra Taylor in the October 30, 2020 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education where she writes, “Unfortunately, recent decades have been particularly hard on America’s fragile system of public higher education: State funding has been slashed, student debt has skyrocketed, and the for-profit college sector exploded. Higher education has become an ever-more costly commodity.” This article also presents a very bleak outlook for higher ed as it is currently constructed.

Recently there was an interesting article in The New York Times entitled, “The Pandemic Depression Is Over. The Pandemic Recession Has Just Begun.” So where does this leave us? It is safe to say that this is not the first time there has been major economic and social disruption in the history of this republic.

After WWII, we went from over-employment of women (during the war effort) to under-employment of this demographic group when returning veterans took back important jobs held by women. But those jobs (75-80 years ago) for the most part do not exist today as we move into the 4^th industrial revolution. Over this time frame, we have moved from a heavy manufacturing economy to a technology and service industries economy.

A new economy requires new thinking and new agility

More and more, business leaders are beginning to understand the value of corporate anthropologists, and more importantly, how they can help people at all levels of a company better "see, feel and think" about their business with fresh eyes. As a corporate anthropologist myself, I preach that the importance of anthropology lies in its ability to help people pause, step out and look at the way they have always done things in new ways, and then make these new ways happen. In my recent article in BusinessNewsDaily, I had the chance to expand on this ethnographic approach to business. Perhaps this could help you and your company?

Corporate anthropology is about adaptation

I have been around for a long time. Made some noticeably big decisions that have made some investors and myself a lot of money. But I have also made a lot of mistakes. Fortunately, not enough to sink the ship. And luckily some of them have turned out to be valuable lessons. So when someone asked me to write about those mistakes, I told them that I could literally write a book because I have made dozens of them…some big, some bad, and eventually, either repairable, avoidable or important lessons learned.

But I am not writing a book so let us focus on two of my mistakes that have been valuable. They fall into two categories: the first goes under analytics. And the second is almost directly opposite: intuition. Eventually, these two mistakes have allowed me to build healthy businesses, both for my clients and myself.

Like it or not, the future of remote work is upon us. All of us need to become more facile at communicating electronically and doing it wisely. In your own business, this might mean you need to prepare a new way of communicating. And, you can't wing it the way you might have done with in-person meetings. Agendas are necessary, and you need to understand new ways of engaging people virtually. But, there have always been meetings. So why the need to change now? Why are new tools even more important today than ever before?

I am thrilled to announce the upcoming publication of my new book, "Rethink: Smashing the Myths of Women in Business." In it, I share eleven case studies — including my own— of all different types of smart, accomplished women who were told they couldn't be a lawyer, or couldn't start their own business, or couldn't be a geoscientist. Guess what? They did it anyway. They smashed the myths of women in business and they became phenomenal successes.

I wrote this book, my second, because I feel it's time for women to rethink the journey they're on, what they can do or can't do, and their relationship with men. I recently got to talk about my book with Craig Gibson of Hometown Living on WSBT, who was a delight. You can watch and listen to our conversation by clicking on the image below.

Who do you think are the ones having a harder time adjusting to working at home during the pandemic, men or women? You may not be surprised (I wasn't) to learn that in general, it is the men who seem to find the home-based business environment the most unsettling, at least among the clients I've been talking with throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

As I discuss in my recent article for ceoworld.biz, in the beginning of the new "working from home" reality, women started out challenged at their changed home life, yet quickly found innovative ways to manage their daily lives, balancing their own needs with those who were counting on them. To read my entire article, click here.

Women and men: very different ways of coping with crisis and change

In March of this year, I had the pleasure of interviewing global credibility expert Mitchell Levy for a terrific On The Brink podcast. Then recently the tables turned and I was the interviewee! Mitch is on a quest to interview 500 thought leaders on credibility for his Thought Leader Life show, and I was honored to be included. I really enjoyed our talk, mainly because it focused on helping organizations change their corporate cultures and grow their businesses in these changing times. As you know, I'm a Blue Ocean Strategist® and a culture change expert so this was right up my alley.

You can watch and listen to our conversation here or click on the image below. You can also catch it on iTunes and Vimeo.

Are you ready to leave the bloody waters of the "red ocean strategy" you’re swimming in and instead, experience the clear, uncontested waters of a Blue Ocean Strategy? What's a Blue Ocean Strategy anyway? And how could you find one for your business or organization?

This video shows you!

In response to so many requests bubbling up during this pandemic and economic recession, I created a new video to help you understand three things:

• What is a “red ocean strategy” in which you are competing against others very much like you?
• What are the five most important elements of a differentiating Blue Ocean Strategy?
• How could you use the Blue Ocean Strategy tools to discover unmet needs, non-users and new ways to add value with innovation, opening up growth opportunities that are perfect for your future?

Make the competition irrelevant

Briefly, Blue Ocean Strategy isn't about doing more of the same, cheaper, or competing with others in the same industry you're in today ("red ocean"). It's about finding customers' unmet needs so you can open a new market space that you can own ("blue ocean"). In these turbulent, disruptive times, businesses and even non-profit organizations need a Blue Ocean Strategy more than ever so they can not just survive, but thrive.

A trained practitioner in Blue Ocean Strategy, I’ve conducted over 425 workshops and speeches and worked with a wide range of global clients on their Blue Ocean Strategy. It is never easy, but we truly believe that the way forward is all around you--if only you can see it. Let us help you.

To view/download the presentation, click on the image below

As we have been working with our clients during this pandemic, we're noticing a recurring theme. They are unhappy about not knowing what comes next. They've figured out how to deal with living at home, working at home and being at home. But now they're beginning to be uncomfortable and anxious about what's coming next. It's strange, isn't it, that without a clear vision of the future, it's often impossible to live today. I've recently recorded a podcast talking about this, which you can listen to here.

Martin Seligman's work on homo prospectus tells us a lot about how we need to see the future clearly if we're going to leave today...even if the future is an imagined one, because that's the way our brains work. Now the challenge is how to do our work when we're uncertain about what's going to be the new normal. What's more, we're not sure it's coming back to what it was. And we're not sure what it's going to be next.