Business Change Management

March 8th was International Women's Day. On the one hand, I love that we take this time to celebrate the significant contributions women have made, and are making, to our culture, our society and our world. But I have to ask: Why do women get one day a year and men get 364?    

Which leads me to a bigger question: Why do we need an International Women's Day at all? After centuries of smashing myths and shattering glass ceilings, are women still not equal to men? Women of color are even more unequal. Are we still an “other”? How do we fix this?

Recently, I had a discussion with a CEO in an engineering firm about how to re-staff his company after he downsized in response to the oil and gas crisis. He is in the seals and gasket industry but plummeting oil prices have crushed him, forcing him to reinvent his business. The challenge was how to employ the new engineering talent he needed without adding unnecessary expenses, at least until his business started to generate cash flow again — not an uncommon challenge today.

It was a similar challenge for a company trying to replace its marketing team without incurring fixed costs. Or a company in the accounting industry that reinvented his staff into interim chief financial officers and offered them to companies that needed their skills but not their full-time costs.

Freelancing, outsourcing and finding other ways to thrive in changing times is no small challenge for companies that have not had to rely on these types of solutions in the past. But now is a good time for them to learn new skills. Freelancing is not going away. In fact it has become a dominant model for many companies. But the perceived complexity is perhaps more simple to solve that it might appear.

In my previous blog on Innovation Games, I talked about how "serious games" have the power to change the way you work, approach problem-solving, and seek out new buyers of your product or service. How do they do this?, you might be asking. What's the secret sauce? In a word, collaboration. Innovation Games work so well because participants come together as a team to generate new ideas and new ways of offering customers what they want.

I'm pleased to announce that Simon Associates Management Consultants has won the
2023 International Elite 100 Award for Corporate Anthropology Consultancy of the Year.
This prestigious recognition is awarded by the UK-based International Elite 100 organization whose objective is "to showcase the extraordinary power to lead from the front and to honor all those who strive harder to achieve quality." Apparently we were nominated by someone we have worked for or with, so whoever you are, thank you very much! We are thrilled.

Can playing games really lead to innovations? Yes, with Innovation Games!

Have you ever sat in a staff "ideation" meeting where the purpose was to come up with groundbreaking, business-building, innovative ideas, and no one could come up with anything? Or if someone did throw out an idea, everyone shot it down? Pretty depressing, right? Well, what if I told you there is something that gets teams engaged, encourages them to work together, and enables them to arrive at breakthrough ideas and accomplish goals faster. All while having fun. What is this magic solution, you ask? Innovation Games.

At Simon Associates Management Consultants, we find the steady downloads of our power points and white papers on Innovation Games totally amazing. Apparently, the challenges of coming out of the pandemic seem to have accelerated the interest in innovation, and as a result, Innovation Games have become in high demand. But you might ask, what are Innovation Games? Should you try them yourself? Do you need a professional’s help, someone like us? Let’s begin at the beginning.

In my last blog I talked about how in these turbulent times, businesses of all shapes and sizes, even non-profits, are finding that their old ways of doing things are just that  — old. They need to change their culture, but they don't know what their current culture is, or how to go about changing it.

I then described how from our earliest childhood, our mind forms a story (which others help us craft) and it doesn't like to deviate from that story, which makes change difficult. I also talked about the workshop I conducted for Eric Buehler's November 2022 Enterprise Agility Global Conference on how to adapt an organization's culture during fast-changing times. You can view the slideshow of my workshop here.

In this blog, I'd like to delve into how change is literally pain but it can be done, and often, must be done.

How can you change your culture if you don't know what your current one is?

Far too often, an HR professional is asked by his/her CEO to help transform their organization's culture. One recent call to us was so typical, and frustrating to the individual who was calling. Without ever having evaluated her company's culture, she could not tell me what culture the company had today or what the CEO wanted for the future.

Boy, is this ever a time for getting "off the brink" to reflect on how we get things done in our businesses and personal lives, and where some changes might need to be made. At SAMC, the recurring theme we're seeing with so many of our clients is what to do post-pandemic (assuming we are post-pandemic) to rebuild their business strategy in order to help their company do what it's supposed to do: adapt, pivot if need be, and grow.

As Blue Ocean Strategy® experts, we have had many calls and emails recently from companies large and small asking us to help them address their dilemmas. They want to know how should they revamp, or even overhaul, the way they offer their products and services while facing an abundance of challenges to their status quo. A big order.

"Ref, no way was that offsides." "Foul? You call that a foul?" "Oh c'mon, you're giving me a YELLOW CARD??"

At the recently-concluded World Cup held over 29 days in Quatar, the comments levied at referees — from players, coaches and spectators alike — were in some cases, for the first time ever, directed at women referees. That's right: six women officials (including Kathryn Nesbitt of the US) worked this year's tournament, the most-watched international sporting event on the planet.