Raising the Bar for Our Profession

October 5th, 2010 by Luc Galoppin

For an organizational change practitioner, lacking safety shoes is symptomatic for not being in touch with the reality of things. There is no chance for your expertise to get used as long as you stay inside the boardroom. Getting your expertise used – and the change to last – means raising the bar in two steps: relationship management and social architecture.

The profession of organizational change management is changing. And it is going in the right direction: clients no longer accept that 70% of the changes fails. And neither should you.

The arena of organizational change practitioners is packed with experts, tools and degrees. We could even add certification and other rituals, all to no avail. Being an expert is not sufficient anymore.

To make a difference, we need to raise the bar for our profession, by adding relationship management and social architecture to the requirements list. (click on the drawing to enlarge)



Level One: Your Expertise
Let’s face it: the days of boardroom consulting are over. Reality is no longer restricted to the 150 slides of your PowerPoint-Conference-Room-Pilot-Presentation. Slowly but surely clients are starting to understand that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that we should put our beautiful models to the test on the shop floor.

The moral of the safety boots is that you need to ‘go local’ in order to make a connection. If you really want to practice organizational change management you need to step out of your project cocoon, right into the field. You need to sit on the handrail with the people who will eventually execute your bright ideas.

Also, you need to sit through the long (and often very technical) discussions of problem solving. Be there when they share war stories and tinker with a solution until it fits. That’s really tough, because 99% of the time you are the dummy in the group. To most consultants that is total agony. Certainly, when your raison d’être is based upon being the expert in the room.

You are no longer the expert once you are on the shop floor.

Get over it.

Level Two: The Relationship
No matter how up-to-date your knowledge is; no matter how state-of-the-art your model is; you should always remember that implementation is the last 99%.

And implementation is a relationship thing. Thus, the first thing you need to be aware of is that you start as a foreign element, so pushing your expertise down the throats of people will not amount to great things.

But then how do you build a relationship? You listen. You zoom in on ‘What are they committed to?’ Then, you commit to their commitments. It’s the only way to win their hearts.

Major Jim Gant knows about relationships. His work on TTE – Tactical Tribal Engagement is unprecedented for counterinsurgency tactics in Iraq and Afghanistan. His contention is to work with tribalism, not against it. In his free ebook ‘One Tribe at a Time’ he talks about an “acceptable level of integration.”:

There is nothing (and I emphasize nothing) that can prove yourself and your team to the tribe more than fighting alongside them. That is the ultimate testament of your team as warriors and your commitment to the tribe. It will create the foundation for influence without authority that is the key to success in tribal engagement.

My ultimate test of relationship management is based on Major Jim Gant’s insights: do you have influence without authority? If yes, then you are ready to raise the bar to the next level.

Level Three: Social Architecture
Ask yourself: What will people be creating when you are gone?

This third level is about building a platform in order to sustain the change. It will require you to get out of the way and to allow a community or a club of people to take over.

Building such a community is not easy because it is not done with the pressure of authority. Rather, it is done through the gradual and consistent work of going local, being there, and connecting (the previous level: relationship management).

Typical examples of a platform include:

a community of key users of different plants who connect with one another based on their domain of expertise;
a community of learning architects who make sure that the best practices from different countries get spread all over the organization;
a community of training administrators who cater for the continuous training and authorization updates that are necessary after the implementation of an ERP project;
a support community that prides itself on a new support process and continuously improves it.
The only thing you need is an element that helps people to connect and share their knowledge: after a while, they declare this as their platform.

Raising the Bar
We are always told to start with the end in mind. As it turns out, the end we have in mind when we are stuck on the first level results in a 70% failure rate. Raising the bar to the level of relationship management and social architecture will urge us to think about different ends.

This, in turn, will shift our vision and influence our execution radically. But make no mistake: these three levels build upon one another.

You need expertise in order to get the job done. This gets your foot inside the door;
Next, you need to consistently prove that you are worthy of people’s trust;
Finally, when people allow you a landing slot on their airport of trust, you are ready to build a platform.
In the end, what does this mean for you as an organizational change practitioner? Consider the following entry criteria in order to enter the next level:

Be an expert, that is the bottom line;
Then, let go of the attachment to being an expert and do the emotional labor that builds trust;
Finally, in order to build a platform, you will need to get out of the way and allow the community to take over.
________
I would like to thank Daryl Conner for challenging me to refine this concept.

http://www.reply-mc.com/2010/10/05/raising-the-bar-for-our-profession/

The two ‘E’s to success - Engagement & Enablement

16-Jun-2010 - PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Following two bleak years for the job market which saw employees grateful to avoid redundancies and many employers putting a freeze on recruitment, recent research from Hay Group, the global management consulting firm, reveals that the tide has turned with 59 per cent of employees in the United Kingdom starting the year with a firm resolution to look for a new job.

- 59 per cent of employees in the United Kingdom started 2010 with the firm resolution to look for a new job

- Cost of replacing employees can be between 50 per cent and 150 per cent of salary

- Employee engagement and talent retention cited as the first and second most important issues respectively by CEOs and HRDs going into 20103

- Organisations that engage and enable employees demonstrate a total reduction in voluntary turnover of 54 per cent4

- Companies in the top quartile on both engagement and enablement achieve revenue growth 4.5 times5 greater than their industry peers who focus on engagement alone

- Employees who are both highly engaged and enabled are 50 per cent6 more likely to outperform expectations.

Loss of talent delivers a hefty blow to a business’s bottom line, and Hay Group studies estimate the cost of replacing employees to be between 50 per cent and 150 per cent of salary5. With businesses potentially facing a significant ‘brain drain’ in 2010, the pressure is on to find effective ways and means of preventing mass exodus of talent as market conditions improve.

The two ‘E’s to success

Many top-performing businesses across Europe and the United States are already deploying effective employee engagement and enablement programmes as a business priority, to mitigate against staff turnover and drive performance and revenue as the global business community continues on its path to recovery. In fact employee engagement and retaining talent were cited as the first and second most important issues respectively by CEOs and HRDs going into 2010.

Hay Group defines an enabling work environment as one which empowers employees to ‘go the extra mile’ and provides the tools and processes to actively deal with employee frustrations. Companies effectively combining employee engagement and enablement report significantly improved revenue growth, staff retention and employee performance. The top organisations on both engagement and enablement achieve revenue growth 4.5 times greater than their industry peers who ranked lowest in the study.

Similarly companies with high levels of engagement show turnover rates at 40 per cent lower than companies with low levels of engagement. However, companies that both engage and enable employees demonstrate a total reduction in voluntary turnover of 54 per cent. Hay Group’s research also reveals that engaged employees are 10 per cent more likely to exceed performance expectations. Employees who are both highly engaged and enabled, however, are 50 per cent more likely to outperform expectations. Past studies have shown that the difference in productivity between superior and typical performers is 35 per cent on average, depending on job complexity.

Nature of Change

There is a new pattern of change emerging driven by information and communications rather than leadership and vision. This is a new cycle. It is interesting because it is qualitatively different from what we all know about change management. The traditional pattern for change rests on:

• Problem – something is wrong, the problem is defined, given shape and the need for change is communicated.

• Solution — the actions you take to address the problem either wrapped in the term initiative or program. The assumption is that there is a solution to each problem. The assumption is that the solution, properly applied, will solve the problem, if it did not then why go to the effort of implementing the solution.

• Adoption — the acceptance of the solution by the workforce. This is the change part of the change process as people are assumed to discontinue old ways of working in favor of new approaches. A well-executed adoption process will ensure the solution is applied properly in order to solve the problem and raise performance.

The logic of Problem/Solution/Adoption to change gives the whole process a mechanistic or programmatic approach, show in the figure below. Follow the steps properly and you will get the intended results. Its interesting that when people encounter difficulties in the change process and they ask for help, the answer is that you must not have done the steps right.

This view is advocated by change experts, for example John Kotter in his book Leading Change comments, “Successful change of any magnitude goes through all eight stages, usually in the sequence shown. Although one normally operates in multiple phases at once, skipping even a single step or getting too far ahead without a solid base almost always creates a problem.” (p.23)

This view is the hallmark of a technical process that equates changing the way you work with how you make a roast beef dinner. True there are steps to follow, but change is a social process that resists mechanistic answers.

Change is a social system that requires a social process

New change processes reflect the social nature of change. The logic of Dissatisfaction/Transparency/Choice and Change is not neat or clean, but it is inherently social. It recognizes that every problem cannot be solved by an initiative and that things will naturally evolve. This is the changing nature of the change process with a pattern based on the following cycle:

• Dissatisfaction – there is a feeling or evidence that the status quo is no longer acceptable. People know things are wrong and they ask for information to prove otherwise.

• Transparency – the demand for information creates a move for transparency either as a proposed solution or as means to rebuild trust while solutions are being implemented.

• Choice - armed with the information created by transparency people start voting with their voices, dollars or feet. Before transparency I either did not have a choice or I did not know how different my options are.

• Change – people change in the face of clear information that drives active choice rather than passive submission. The change creates dissatisfaction that drives the energy and cycle of improvement.

These activities occur continuously in a cycle, shown in the figure below. It is important to note that companies using this cycle never really ‘solve’ a problem rather then are always working toward improving processes as one solution or changes in the marketplace create new issues requiring choice and change. The ability to use transparency and choice to adapt gives this approach greater flexibility than the more programmatic approach to change that rests on a premise of holding the world constant while we execute the change initiative.

The nature of change is changing because the flow and control of information has become turbulent no longer flowing top down, but flowing in every direction at all times. This means that the ability to manage and lead change is no longer based on messaging, communication and traditional sponsorship. Rather it is based on processes of informing, enrolling and adapting that is significantly more disruptive and difficult to manage for executives and leaders.

The changing nature of change is symptomatic of broader changes facing enterprises and their leadership teams. This post seeks to put the changing nature of change on the table with a brief description of the differences and the process. Subsequent posts will talk about what these activities mean for the enterprise and IT.

Why your business process change management model needs to change

Daniel Sheehan was neck-deep in an SAP implementation at Georgia-Pacific LLC in the mid-1990s when he saw the importance of business process change management. The Atlanta-based paper and pulp manufacturer had decided that the patchwork of back-office systems used by its 12 divisions needed to be centralized. Everyone agreed the plan made sense on paper. A year into the work, with its business division leaders in revolt, Georgia Pacific shut down the SAP project and wrote off $120 million, recounted Sheehan, then an IT manager on the implementation.

More on change management CIO lessons in change management Mastering the skills of change management

"This reengineering process had nothing to do with the software, and had everything to do with change management," said Sheehan, now CIO at Dunkin' Brands Inc., whose brands include Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins. "It was amazing how worked-up people would get about changing. I learned a big lesson there."

Sheehan took his "big lesson" on change management across town to Coca-Cola, which he helped see through a seven-year, $1.7 billion global SAP implementation. And at Dunkin', his change management skills continue to be put to the test: He recently was tapped by business leadership, for example, to show 150 new Dunkin' franchisees the value of standardizing on and financially supporting corporate platforms -- not a job typically given to the CIO.

"Forget the technology; it is all about human behavior and how you get people to look at things differently," Sheehan said.

Ten years into a new century, effective business process change management remains as critical as ever -- and as elusive. That's not because CIOs are inherently bad at change management or haven't recognized how important change management skills are to the job of being a good CIO, experts say. Factors ranging from the way employees get company information to the pace of change now required of companies to stay competitive, are upending traditional change management models.

"Change management is a perennial issue for CIOs because the context of change management is constantly changing," said Mark McDonald, head of research for Gartner Executive Programs at the Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy.

This is especially true for business process change management, said McDonald, who has written a series of blogs on the changing nature of change management.

Unlike infrastructure change management, where mechanical precision is tantamount to success, business process change management is more like a social science, in McDonald's view, subject to judgment and interpretation and dependent on context.

"In infrastructure change management, you need to get 100% on your test. With business change management, it is pretty much impossible to get 100%," McDonald said. Change is a social process that resists mechanistic answers, he added.

According to McDonald, traditional change management models no longer hold.

Betting the success of an entire company on an SAP implementation or on a merger and acquisition, for example, is highly risky and disruptive to the growth of organizations and to day-to-day operations, McDonald said: In a rapidly changing business environment, successful companies often are better off making many small changes whose sum ideally is greater than any one transformation. Gartner has found that the total number of changes that organizations have to go through on a yearly basis has grown dramatically, and each change has gotten much smaller, he said.

That's why change management doesn't go off the radar. Just when we think we have a handle on it, the rules of the game change. Jack Santos executive strategist, Burton Group executive advisory program

Also changing is the way change is brought about in the enterprise, McDonald said. Thanks to social media outlets, modifications to the way employees do their work are increasingly critiqued in real time. In this setting, the old, top-down paradigm of change management -- senior leadership identifies a problem, proposes a solution and goes to considerable pains to explain why that change is good for the rank and file -- is no longer tenable.

Instead, the first signs of a need to change often bubble up from the bottom, based not on a strategic decision from the top, but on a feeling of dissatisfaction among the rank and file, McDonald said. Thus, the first step in change management is for employers to be attuned to these rumblings of discontent. Secondly, employees and the public are demanding greater transparency from employers in the face of change. This clamor may stem in part from employees' and the public's increased access to all kinds of information -- or from a lack of trust in the wake of recent financial scandals and crises, he posits. Recognizing this need for more transparency is critical to effecting and managing change.

"People change in the face of clear information that drives active choice rather than passive submission," McDonald said.

Tom Sawyer's fence

Jack Santos, executive strategist for the executive advisory program at Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group, agrees that change itself is changing. "That's why change management doesn't go off the radar. Just when we think we have a handle on it, the rules of the game change," he said.

But the new zeitgeist also applies at the IT infrastructure level, where theconsumerization of IT has upended change management, Santos argued.

"IT traditionally has said, 'We have to get changes under control.' Small changes were made on a once-a-week-basis; big changes, on a version-rollout basis, once a quarter. Now a Google comes along and screws that up, making changes all the time," Santos said. "With the consumerization of IT and the growing technology expertise in the business ranks, the business has turned around and said, 'Gee, why can't we manage change like that?'"

Santos' advice to CIOs? "Because business is more involved in IT, business has got to be more involved in change management, and that is best described as business process change management."

Gartner's McDonald put it more strongly: "The first thing CIOs need to do is get the hell out of the way of the business, unless the CIO is changing the IT organization or IT processes," he said. While IT may be spending a huge chunk of money on the change, one of the biggest mistakes CIOs can make is to take ownership of business process change management, he said.

"The business executive is more than happy to assign the majority of the risk to the CIO and IT for change management. It is like Tom Sawyer getting others to whitewash his aunt's fence," McDonald said.

http://searchcio.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid182_gci1513986,00.html?track=NL-964&ad=768923&asrc=EM_NLN_11705472&uid=6004219

Understanding Outside-In Process

To fully understand Outside-In Process, commonly called "Outside-In" or "OI," you first have to step outside your current perception of the process discipline. OI takes many secondary elements of traditional process and pushes them to the forefront–and adds new elements at the front and back ends of process design.

Shattering the traditional process model

Traditional process design, which includes approaches such as Six Sigma, Lean, TOC and TQM) works "inside-out." Traditional approaches focus on what's happening internally, and the primary goals are typically internal measures.

In recent years, process professionals driving design have started paying much more attention to customer needs. Despite this enhanced sensitivity to customer needs, however, customer considerations influence process design as a conditioner rather than drive process design, as with Outside-In.

Scope leap

Outside-In brings "scope leap," rather than scope creep, to process design. OI starts by developing customer vision. We often call this "finding your inner customer." By seeing through customer eyes, we can much more readily appreciate customer concerns–and we can often identify unarticulated needs subconsciously waiting for business to discover how to fulfill them.

An excellent example of an unarticulated need is customers accepting low service electronics retailing as the price for paying less than at boutique stores–until Best Buy transformed itself into a low price, high service and demographically sensitive seller. Best Buy broke the electronics retailing mold to deliver what customers thought they couldn't have–but BB understood they yearned for.

But why do we call such customer vision "process?" Because business concepts by themselves deliver no customer value. The implementation of concepts–the work designed to make them the reality–delivers the value. And designing work is pure process, or should be. Which makes developing customer-centric business strategies the first step that drives the rest of OI.

New focus

In most settings, traditional, inside-out process approaches focus 90% of process attention on how work is performed, which is natural because traditional process started in manufacturing, where how work happens is the dominant variable affecting both quality and efficiency. However, while manufacturing certainly does play a role in delivering customer value, discovering new ways to please customers–and implementing the appropriate activities–starts with front and back office functions or in service areas. And OI excels at designing office/serviced (O/S) process.

Once customer strategies are determined, Outside-In designs:

• What work will implement the strategies
• Who would best perform this work (functionally)
• How work should be accomplished
• Technology support required to enable and facilitate the work

All but how fall outside the traditional purview of business process.

Transformational change

Traditional process design delivers incremental change. But putting the customer in the driver's seat may require transformational change. When called for, OI will redefine work, redraw functional boundaries, reroute workflow and information flow and recalibrate the technology environment. However much change you decide to make, OI is up to the task.

http://www.customerthink.com/blog/understanding_outside_in_process

7 Elements for a WoW Presentation

I’ve been thinking about presentations as I begin to prepare for our upcoming seminars. I want to insure that everyone is engaged and is passionate about creating WoW moments even before they leave. When you think about seminars how many do you recall when you walked out saying WoW!? If you are like me, even though you may be very selective, the WoW sessions are few and far between.

During my years as a training manager I had the opportunity to not only speak to many audiences, but also watch many presentations, those with educational content and those delivering a message. I believe these 7 steps can help everyone deliver a WoW presentation. As you prepare write these steps down and then write how you will accomplish each step.

1. Know your audience! Always remember you are not the star, you’re audience is. They have come to learn from you, but in order for your message to resonate it has to be relevant. Focus on one topic and have three key takeaways. Engineers typically need visuals and diagrams, sales people need energy and movement.

2. Prepare! No matter how professional and experienced you are you must know your content inside and out. Once you understand your audience research their demographic and be able to weave it into the presentation. Practice and hone your delivery. No one wants to listen to a scripted presenter and if you know your content you can move through with the tempo needed for any given audience. Body language matters! If you are most comfortable standing behind a podium insure you have movement in the tone of your voice & presentation. If you like to “dance” on the stage find marks to stand for at least 2 – 3 minutes. Dancing around on stage is distracting and takes away from your message.

3. Connect! Every presentation that I remember started with an emotional connection. A moving or funny story, a connection to the association or group you are speaking to, a mention of the city or company. Find a way to connect. Always remember why would someone sit up and WANT to listen. Be interactive with your audience as appropriate. A show of hands in the middle of a presentation can really break things up. This gains ownership and keeps the audience thinking, maybe he is going to ask another question.

4. Be Passionate! If you are not passionate about your topic, don’t present. You must show emotion and be passionate. If the topic you’ve chosen or have been given is simply boring, mix in a relevant story or anecdote. If you are tired, do five minutes of aerobic activity and deep breathing prior to starting.

5. Stay Focused! Share your agenda with the audience up front; let them know what you are going to talk about and what your key points will be. This keeps you honest as you must deliver. Keep a list of bullet points you must address, and in order, on a note card or on the podium. You need to know this like the back of your hand. Do not rely on Microsoft PowerPoint™. Use a flip chart if this keeps you on track. Have someone in the front row flash time cards in fifteen, then ten, then five minute intervals with a time is up card to insure you finish on time.

6. Q&A! If time permits always end with at least two or three questions. The most important thing about Q&A – repeat the question! This not only insures the audience hears the question, but more importantly it lets you hear the question once again to insure you answer the question. At all costs do not go into a long story or answer. Be as succinct as possible so you can stay focused and so others can ask questions as well.

7. Thank you & Contact Information! Always remember to thank those who’ve invited you and the audience. Remember to direct everyone to a place where they can find your contact information.

It is amazing, isn't it? The elements of creating a WoW Presentation are actually very similar, if not the same, as creating WoW moments in any envirornment! Remember it is always about the customer - in this case the audience!

Terrie Rolwes

Wow Customer Experience Group

Every Moment Can Be A WoW Moment!

http://www.wowcustomer.com/blog-post/12/7-Elements-for-a-WoW-Presentation.html

The man who says he hasn't eaten or drunk for 70 years: Why are eminent doctors taking him seriously? | Mail Online

There are few people, however busy their lives, unable to remember the last meal that they consumed. But Prahlad Jani is one of them.

And the reason is that the last morsel of food that he says passed his lips did so in the early years of World War II.

‘I can’t recall exactly what it was,’ the 82-year-old Indian admits. ‘It was such a long time ago.’

During the 70-odd years since, Mr Jani says he has eaten not so much as a single grain of rice nor consumed a drop of water. And while such an extended gap between meals might be expected to have a fatal impact on the activities of one so deprived, this octogenarian says he’s never felt better.

Tests: 83-year-old Prahlad Jani has twice attended hospital to be watched round the clock by eminent doctors

‘Although I walk 100 or 200 kilometres in the jungle, I never sweat and don’t feel tired or sleepy,’ he says. ‘I can meditate for three, eight or 12 hours — or even months.’

No food? No water? Superhuman strength? One straitjacket (size zero) for Mr Jani, please.

It is, of course, more than tempting to dismiss this Hindu holy man and his claims as the stuff of absolute nonsense.

Medical science tells us that human beings rarely survive more than a week without water, and a couple of months at most without food. To even suggest otherwise is ridiculous, and also potentially dangerous.

Practitioners of extreme starvation diets can cause serious damage to their bodies, leading to death. And yet, despite all that is known, there is a growing bandwagon that says Mr Jani and his incredible claims should not be dismissed entirely out of hand.

On Thursday afternoon, he emerged from hospital in the Indian state of Gujarat, where he had spent 15 days. He was monitored around the clock and, according to the medics who oversaw him, consumed no food and no water whatsoever.

No human should be able to survive such conditions unscathed — the lack of water alone should have killed him. But Mr Jani apparently suffered absolutely no ill-effects at all.

Hindu: Mr Jani is one of countless from his religion to make claims of unworldly feats

Attending a press conference at the Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad, he said: ‘I am fit and strong today and even the doctors agree. They ran every test possible for 15 days and proved that I do not need food to keep me strong.

'I am strong and healthy, because it is the way God wants me to be.’

So what is the explanation for his ability to endure such privations? No one knows for sure. But over the next three months, the medics will attempt to come up with some answers as they study the results of a battery of tests.

Military scientists drawn from India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation believe that Mr Jani could hold the key to understanding how humans can be taught to survive for long periods without sustenance.

‘It is possible that it will be able to help save human lives during natural disasters, high altitude, sea journeys and other natural and human extremities,’ said a spokesman for the team.

‘We can educate people about the survival techniques in adverse conditions with little food and water, or nothing at all.’ He added: ‘If his claims are verified, it will be a breakthrough in medical science.’

By any standards that is a very big ‘if’. For starters, the doctors are considering only the two weeks during which Mr Jani was under their supervision. His claims not to have eaten for the preceding seven decades can and will never be
verified. The same goes for much of his early history.

According to his version of events — and there is no other — Mr Jani left his home in Rajasthan at the age of seven, and went to live in the jungle.

When he reached the age of 11, he underwent a religious experience during which he became a follower of the Hindu goddess Amba. In her honour, he chose to dress as a female devotee, wearing a red sari-like garment, nose-ring, bangles and crimson flowers in his shoulder-length hair.

In return, Mr Jani believes that the goddess has sustained him ever since by feeding him with a lifegiving, invisible ‘elixir’, which has supposedly given him the strength to continue without food or water.

For at least the past 40 years, Mr Jani has been living, hermit-like, in a cave in the jungles close to the Gujarati temple of Ambaji. He rises at 4am, spending most of the day meditating.

While well-known locally, for many years Mr Jani was no more famous than the millions of other Hindu holy men — sadhus or yogi as they are known — in India.

Mystical figures, these individuals renounce normal life for one on the margins of society, focusing every waking minute on the spiritual. They often assume austere or extreme practices — standing on one leg or refusing to talk for years on end.

Like Mr Jani, many sadhus regularly undergo lengthy periods of fasting. But the claim that his fast had endured for decades caught the public imagination and first propelled him into the limelight.

Challenged to prove that he could survive without food or water, in 2003 he underwent his first hospital investigations. Then, as now, he was placed under the care of Dr Sudhir Shah, a consultant neurologist from Ahmedabad who specialises in studying people with seemingly ‘supernatural’ powers.

Doctors had prepared a special glass-walled room equipped with CCTV cameras to monitor Mr Jani for ten days. The toilet was sealed to test his claim that he had no need to urinate or defecate.

The only fluid allowed was a small amount of water, to use as mouthwash. This was collected and measured in a beaker when he spat it out, to make sure that none had been drunk.

Scans revealed some urine accumulation in his bladder, but this seemed to be re-absorbed by the body because it was never passed.

In every other respect, clinically, Mr Jani was found to be perfectly normal.

While the results secured him an international following, they failed to offer any concrete answers. As a result, Dr Shah and the military team decided to repeat the experiment this year.

'We may never know the truth, but until he is exposed as a fraud, perhaps we should enjoy suspending our disbelief and give Mr Jani the benefit of the doubt'

So, on April 22, Mr Jani re-entered the hospital for 15 days of tests. They ended on Thursday afternoon with doctors admitting that they were baffled by what they had seen.

Presenting their preliminary findings, Dr Shah was joined by biologist Dr Ilavashagn, director of the Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), a heavily-funded department of the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

The doctors announced that despite apparently living on thin air for two weeks, the holy man was more healthy than someone half his age.

Blood tests, hormone profiles, MRIs and angiographs (imaging tests of the blood vessels) all pointed to the conclusion that Mr Jani had not needed to eat, drink or use the toilet once.

Dr Ilavazhagn said: ‘Clinical, biochemical, radiological and other relevant examinations were done on Prahlad Jani and all reports were within the safe range throughout the study. He is healthy, his mind is sharp.

'What is truly astonishing, and something we have no explanation for, is that he has not passed stools or urine. To my knowledge, that is medically unprecedented.’

There will be many who maintain that the latest tests prove nothing — and that Mr Jani’s survival is down to nothing more mysterious than trickery.

That’s the view held by the Indian Rationalist Association, an organisation which publicly campaigns against superstition and spiritual fraudsters.

It has attacked the Indian Ministry of Defence for even agreeing to take part in the tests, accusing them of being ‘taken in by the absurd claims of a village fraud’.

Sanal Edamaruku, the association’s secretary general, told the Mail: ‘I asked to be allowed to send an independent team to survey the room where this test is taking place, but I was repeatedly turned down.

'It is ridiculous to ask people to believe that any man can go 15 days, let alone 70 years, without food or water.

Seven decades: Mr Jani claims he had a religious experience as a teenager

‘Dr Shah has been in charge of three similar investigations over the past ten years, and he has never allowed independent verification.

'In 2000, he was asking for funds to investigate a man he claimed got his energy from the sun, just like plants do.

‘In 2003, he even approached NASA for funds to investigate Mr Jani, claiming astronauts might benefit from the research. This particular hospital, led by this particular doctor, keeps on making these claims without ever producing evidence or publishing research.’

Mr Edamaruku is convinced that Mr Jani must have had access to food and water at the hospital, and does not believe that he was kept under strict supervision around the clock.

He says that whenever the Rationalist Association has investigated individuals making similar claims, all have been exposed as frauds.

In 1999, they investigated a woman who claimed that she was the reincarnation of another Hindu goddess. For five years, she had remained alone in a small closet where it was claimed she had not eaten nor passed any urine or faeces.

In co-operation with the police, investigators from the association searched the room, finding a toilet hidden behind a shelf and a disguised hole through which she received food. Blood tests revealed the presence of glucose, indicating the intake of food.

To further prove the case, a gas was released into the room that made the woman vomit. The contents of her stomach were found to include pieces of recently-eaten chapatti and potatoes.

'I am strong and healthy, because it is the way God wants me to be,’ says Prahlad Jani

Mr Edamaruku is concerned that by publicising the activities of individuals such as Mr Jani, others will be encouraged to copy.

‘The Hindu religion is a belief system that’s all about magical thinking, about great things happening that are not understandable to the ordinary person,’ he explained.

‘These claims are very dangerous, because people try to follow these holy men and can end up hurting themselves.

‘In any other religion there’s a priest who requires a lot of training and there’s a structure which means people can’t just make up their qualifications.

'In Hinduism, anyone can become a guru overnight. You just decide that’s what you are, dress the part and become it.’

Perhaps he’s right. Doesn’t logic and common sense dictate that Prahlad Jani must be tricking the world somehow?

And yet, there’s a part of all of us that would love to believe such a human ‘miracle’ could be true.

After all, isn’t a consultant neurologist staking his reputation on these tests being entirely watertight?

We may never know the truth, but until he is exposed as a fraud, perhaps we should enjoy suspending our disbelief and give Mr Jani the benefit of the doubt.

After all, wouldn’t life be boring if everything was rational?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1274779/The-man-says-eaten-drunk-70-years-Why-eminent-doctors-taking-seriously.html?ito=feeds-newsxml#ixzz0nPmFSopW

IMPLEMENTING CHANGE

Here are some steps to help you prepare to make successful changes in your practice.

Consider this scenario: You walk into your office one day carrying a book on management. Your employees groan, roll their eyes and make snide remarks about change coming to the office. If this has happened to you, it is likely because change has been mishandled in the past.

It’s not unusual for a boss in a financial services practice to impose office-altering changes after he or she reads new books or attends conferences, but the changes often are mismanaged and could have a devastating effect on the firm in the long run.

Most office employees resist change, and some actively fight it. It requires a new learning curve. It means a loss of productivity during the learning phase and it means a disruption in daily activities. Therefore, unless there is an overwhelming reason for change, most employees will be uncomfortable with it.

Some employees may feel threatened by change. This may be a reaction to a loss of control or a perception that their job is going to go away once the change is effected. For this reason and others, implementing change in an office environment requires careful preparation and sensitivity to the perception of those who will be affected by it.

You cannot sell change to your employees. Selling change to employees is not a sustainable strategy for success. When office workers listen to the boss “selling them” on some revolutionary new way of doing things, most will smile and appear to accept the news, but quietly to themselves are saying, “No way is this going to work.”

Change needs to be understood and managed in a co-operative environment. Instead of selling change, the owner or manager should be focused on being a settling influence as change is introduced. Firm owners and/or managers need to check that people affected by change agree with or at least understand the need for it, have a chance to decide how it will be managed, and to be involved in the planning and implementation.

What if change needs to be made quickly? If change is needed quickly, the first step is to probe the reasons why. Is the urgency real? Will the effects of agreeing to a more reasonable timeframe be more disastrous than trying to push through a quick change? Quick changes often lead to problems later, including but not limited to employee acceptance and adherence. Change of any sort needs to be fully explained and justified in order to get buy-in.

For most change to be successful, creating a sense of ownership is necessary. The simple fact is that conventional organizational change, which typically involves training and development (and ‘motivation’) frequently fails. It fails because employees look at things differently than owners and managers. Some bosses actually believe that people who are paid to do a job should do what they are told to do. Imposing change on people doesn’t work because:

• it assumes that the employee’s personal aims and wishes are aligned with those of the organization or that there is no need for such alignment.

• it assumes that the employee wants the type of change that the firm deems appropriate for them.

Instead of imposing change on your employees, you should consider exploring ways to align the aims of the business with the needs of your employees. This does not mean that because you consulted with your employees before and during change that you are handing over the firm to them. The reason to consult with your staff is that it saves you from yourself and your own wrong assumptions.

Consulting with them gives you and them a chance to fully explore and understand the implications and feasibility of what you think needs to change. And, it gives your employees the opportunity to see things from both sides and may just open the door to some very good ideas for doing things better than you could have thought up all by yourself. In fact, it helps you to see things from both sides, too.

Often, organizations have enacted change without fully engaging the employees in the process because they perceive that there is not enough time to reassess and realign aims and values or that change is a response to some crisis. Crisis, though, is no excuse for compromising integrity or short-circuiting respect for the views of your employees. Crisis should be a wake-up call to enact change carefully and is the best reason to re-align your aims and consult with your staff on that change. When a firm is in crisis mode, the employees are almost always okay with doing what it takes to “right the ship.”

How do you enact change? Change should be handled as a project and managed accordingly. This means developing the conditions, variables and consequences of change. It also means enlisting your employees in the process of change through a thoughtful, considerate schedule that takes into account what needs to be done to successfully enact the change given the limitations and schedule implications to those employees who will ultimately have to deal with a transition. Project management takes into account a series of activities that leads to a successful outcome or change in the firm.
Building a project requires some skill. Apart from using project management software, there are practical considerations to incorporate into the planning process. Here are four steps to consider:

1. Setting goals is usually the first, most logical step. What do you hope to accomplish with the change in your office? When do you hope to accomplish it? This might involve a strategic planning-type meeting with staff to develop ideas and share insights. Using a third-party consultant, for instance, to facilitate discussions with staff on change can further distance you from the negative role of persuader.

2. Setting the roles and responsibilities is usually the second step. Who is responsible for what and how do you decide who is accountable?

3. Setting a timeline for successful completion of the project, for instance, could be the third step. Whether you develop advanced Gantt charts that illustrate the timeline or not, success does not depend on fancy graphics, but simple, clear communication of the timeline.

4. Set up a measurement system to determine how successful the firm is in making the change(s) and whether the result matched the expectations.
Involving your staff in every step of the change process will greatly improve the chances of success. Try to remember before enacting change that change for sake of change alone is largely useless. To be successful, a firm does not need to jump on every new trend or idea that comes around. Carefully evaluating those trends or ideas in light of a firm’s vision, values and the resulting benefit to the client goes a long way toward determining the validity of making a change.

http://www.fa-mag.com/component/content/article/5473.html?magazineID=1&issue=143&Itemid=73

Leadership & Effective Change Initiatives

Change management initiatives are necessary for organizations to remain competitive in our rapidly evolving economic climate. These initiatives are extremely important, yet the majority of them are considered failures.

Recent surveys of chief executives from major corporations say up to 75 percent of their organizational change efforts do not deliver promised results. Overall, a full two-thirds of change management initiatives fail all together.

Since the pace of change in organizations is increasing daily, there is no better time to understand how organizational change initiatives can become more effective. The short answer is stronger leadership.

According to leadership expert and author John P. Kotter in his book "Leading Change," there are eight common errors firms make when implementing change:

1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 or more
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

None of these errors alone would be all that consequential in a slower-paced, less competitive environment, but since the speed of change will only continue to increase addressing these concerns is of extreme importance.

All of these reasons for failure can be summarized by a lack of strong leadership. In fact, "ineffective change sponsorship or leadership" at the executive level was cited as the primary reason for failure in numerous research reports by Prosci,Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly and others throughout the past decade.

According to this research, the top three reasons for failure with change initiatives were:

1. Ineffective change sponsorship or leadership from executives
2. Employee resistance
3. Poor support and alignment with middle managers

Before any organizational change effort is initiated, it is vital for the leader to fully understand the scope of his or her commitment and involvement. Organizational change efforts succeed only when the leader is 100 percent committed and thoroughly embraces the effort required for its success.

Kotter's eight-stage process for successful change initiatives is a solid blueprint for leaders to model. To succeed the leader must follow each of these stages and stay fully committed and present throughout the process.

A 2002 McKinsey Quarterly study of 40 banks, manufacturers, hospitals and utilities titled "Helping Employees Embrace Change" revealed that of the companies that were successful in their change initiatives, all shared the following attributes:

• All levels of the organization were involved from the very beginning
• Responsibilities were clear
• Reasons for the change were clear to everyone

Change takes time because employees need to move through their own stages of denial, resistance, exploration and finally commitment. Management must therefore be patient and recognize that every employee needs to go through each phase at his or her own pace.

This may seem to contradict the sense of urgency required to bring about change in the first place, but not if everyone is involved from the very beginning. Resistance from employees diminishes in direct proportion to the openness from upper management. By keeping all employees aware of the plan from the start and by giving them a clear and compelling vision of the future, a leader can help bring them on board with the change.

Most of us don't like change of any kind and it is natural to resist because change often brings on anxiety by disrupting the status quo. This is true in our personal lives as well as our professional lives. However, change is inevitable and therefore we must all find ways to enable effective change to succeed.

Leaders must be extremely vigilant in every step of a change initiative because they most directly determine whether it is successful or not. Their guidance and stewardship throughout the process is more important than anything else.

The Change-Management Challenge of Increasing IT Smarts - Part 1

Yesterday, a CIO said to me: "It's time to increase the IT-smarts of the rest of the business. They are demanding more direct control and they are ready for it."

To which I replied, "Congratulations and condolences. Get ready, for an uphill climb."

Boosting IT-smarts is a change-management challenge. But classic change-management approaches often fall short because they focus on the logical, rather than psychological, aspects of change. Behavior and decisions are driven not only by rational but also irrational factors, including behavioral norms, old patterns and short-term gratification. There's a wonderful article published by McKinsey last year entitled, "The Irrational Side of Change Management," that sheds light on the elements of human nature that often stymie successful change.

This CIO, and any CIO or IT leader interested in fostering IT-smarts, should consider this research as they define their change program. To jump start this definition, here are eight steps that I believe are critical to creating an IT-smart enterprise:

1. Assess current performance
2. Make sure the IT house is in order
3. Focus where the pain is worth the gain
4. Tell a good story
5. Target people who like to change
6. Use action-based versus classroom learning
7. Deliver tools that empower self-sufficiency
8. Incentivize the right behaviors

In this post, let's tackle the first four. We'll tackle the rest in the next post.

1. Assess current performance. Survey business and IT leaders to assess how they perceive the importance and value of IT, manage the IT asset, and view the quality of the IT-business partnership (if you would like a copy of my survey, click here). Use the results of the survey to understand strengths and weaknesses and identify opportunities, then use them as a baseline to gauge progress going forward.

2. Make sure the IT house is in order. Don't expect the other parts of the business to get smarter about IT if the IT organization isn't already smart about the business. At a minimum, make sure that transparent IT planning and prioritization processes are in place, everyone understands what services are delivered and how to submit requests, and IT has a solid track record for delivering on commitments and running efficiently.

3. Focus efforts where the pain is worth the gain. Find out where Pareto lives and target your IT-smart efforts accordingly. What systems are used across the organization? What systems impact your external customers? What key initiatives are planned or underway that are critically important to the business? Don't work in the background, but demonstrate the impact of IT-smarts in the foreground, where the results will have impact and be noticed.

4. Tell a good story and make sure that it is written collaboratively. Stories are one of the best ways to capture and retain attention, but only if they resonate across a broad audience. To write an effective story, sketch the outline, leave a lot of white space, and get others engaged in filling in the details. Make sure the story balances issues of the past with promises for the future, benefits the external customers, and taps into the hopes, needs, fears, and conflict that exist within the business.

At this point in the process, the CIO/IT leader has identified the high impact opportunities for increasing IT-smarts (and if there are soft spots in IT that need to be shored up, is addressing those first.) In addition, he has built a coalition for change by crafting a story that resonates up, down, and, across the organization. He is now ready to define the tactics to translate the strategy into action.

In the next post, we will discuss the final four steps to help CIOs transform the company into the very model of the modern, IT-smart enterprise.