The Solution

Self-imposed Bureaucracy

By Rick McMullen December 29, 2020 Change Management, Human Resources, Marketing

Not all change is easy. The opposite is also true – not all change is hard. The key to anchoring any change in your culture is knowing how to handle both.

As with most problems, solving the problem is rooted in ensuring you ask the right questions to define what the actual problem is and allowing the solution to naturally flow from the answers, without bias.

“I bet that’ll work” and “Ooohh… that’s going to be tough” are sure-fire approaches to failure without doing the research. That can be as simple as a SWOT exercise (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats).

As ‘Change’ is the process of altering people’s behavior and not a ‘Project,’ we need to know where are people are starting, clearly identify what they’re going to face going through the change, and ensuring they have the tools available to get there.

You may have already walked the path of change. The people the change is being imposed on also have to walk that path. Maybe you just need to point. Maybe you’ll need to provide a compass, a machete, and rations. Figure that one out. That’s job one.

Translating thoughts

By Rick McMullen April 20, 2019 Communications, Human Resources, Marketing

Perhaps the simplest method of transmitting a complex idea is to say it. To tell someone. The problem is, that involves at least two translations.

How do you think? Is it in words? Emotions? Do you see text? Do you hear words? While you’re thinking, do you concern yourself with what specific words mean? Why do we use expressions such as, “Think before you speak.” or “Perhaps you should use your ‘inside’ voice.” or even “Engage some filters.”

Is it fair to say that regardless of how you believe you think about ideas, that it requires some ‘processing’ before we release those thoughts to the world? There’s our first translation.

How about when you hear someone else’s thought? Does it always make perfect sense as soon as you’re exposed to it, or do we process incoming information before we assimilate it? Translation number two.

Ideas aren’t computer data. There’s no such thing as a perfect copy. We can’t plug a thumb drive into our head, copy an idea and share that exactly as we developed it. Not yet at least.