Brand U’s working in organizations have to anticipate and manage change around them. So, the first question is when do organizations change? Traditional, senior managers believe that change happens when the status quo becomes more painful than making the change. If a company is truly at a crossroads, in a high-risk situation, and with multiple …
When The Fear of The Status Quo Becomes Too Painful: Change Happens Read More »
What personal Brand U paradigm shift have you gone through? Do you have a vision of something you want to do? What’s important to you about work? Are you secure with your work/career/job? Have you churned recently? Was it voluntary or forced? How did it feel? How did you adapt? Do you believe in …
Not too many years ago, if we worked for a company straight out of school and kept our noses clean, we were ensured employment as long as we wanted it. My first employer viewed ‘womb to tomb’ employment as its major employee benefit. There’s a new employment and social contract in the workplace. Recently, this …
William Bridges, a profound thinker of work, said, “when you look for a job, you are looking for something that is fading from the socioeconomic picture because it is past its evolutionary prime.”[i] In Job Shift and other books, he calls this ‘de-jobbing.’ He makes the critical distinction between a job and work. A job …
The only management practice that’s now constant is the practice of constantly accommodating to change. William McGowan, MCI Chairman Work, careers, and jobs now shift like quicksand. The destruction of traditional jobs, the emergence of Brand U careers, the role of new work rules, and the fundamental changes of work can’t be ignored or dismissed. …
Much of the rapid organizational transformations including indiscriminate downsizing over the last several years have been senseless. Approximately 62% of companies in one survey didn’t even look at other methods for reducing costs before getting rid of people. Many followed the reengineering herd to downsize people instead of changing fundamental processes or growing the business. …
With more people having access to business information, markets are becoming more efficient and effective. To remain competitive, companies are forced to rethink every aspect of their business and their basic assumptions – their business models of pricing, demand, delivery, inventory management, marketing strategies, and branding. The competitiveness paradigm discussed in the last chapter infects …
Over the last several years, your employer may have downsized, restructured, rightsized, transformed, teamed, and refocused itself. This may mean different things to you. You’ve been asked to do more with less. Your friends have been fired. You’re working longer hours. Your bosses are making stupid decisions. You’re getting paid less per hour than last …
Schumacher about 20 years ago wrote a simple and paradigm-busting book called Small is Beautiful. This was a breakthrough book when the business world was thinking big is better. In year 2000, small means entrepreneurial, start-up, paradigm busting, vibrant, customer-driven, free, and profitable. Big, slow, hindering, plodding, and corporate are dead. Entrepreneurship, ‘doing it your …
Johnny Paycheck’s ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ is now the Brand U anthem. And this attitude has now mainstreamed. One of the many new phenomena of this economy is the number of people who are quitting their jobs. Fortune, the capitalist’s magazine, had a piece recently called ‘The Joy of Quitting,” Well, it …