Changing the Game: Build Resilience NOW

(This NEW course will debut in Vancouver on March 22 and in Toronto on June 5, 2012.)

How we manage and get work done in organizations today  is not that much different from how our grandparents did it. Those rigid, unquestioned, out-dated beliefs, approaches and tools are simply incapable of working effectively in times of vicious volatility, uncertainty, disruption, changing demographics and unexpected chance events. Nor does the answer lie in embracing warmed-over theories formulated during the last century when business success was more easily predicted, planned and managed. Think meltdown.

Overused command-and-control techniques for managing people  can’t cope with the complexity and imperatives of the new world order, where real customer-value decisions are increasingly made and executed on the periphery of the organization, not at the top. Trusted business practices require a major reassessment and overhaul, if not outright retirement. If how you’re working isn’t working, this truly game-changing course is for you.

In our black-swan world of unanticipated, largely unavoidable catastrophes,  if you’re not rethinking your game, you’re living on borrowed time. Business leaders must ask whether their approach to growth, sustainable advantage and organizational revitalization is up to the challenge? Thinking that business-as-usual metrics and incremental improvements are sufficient to survive is a path that leads to mediocrity. The solution lies in becoming a more resilient, open, adaptive organization.

Where do you want to be?  At the top of your game or on the sidelines stymied by your traditional way of doing business? Game changing requires ruthless self-enquiry, deep insight and an abiding commitment to making innovation work. Unsuccessful companies rarely question their entrenched methodologies nor grasp the reasons for fundamental changes in longstanding practices.

The purpose of this cutting-edge, counter-intuitive course  is not so much about proposing new tools to fix the broken or decaying parts of your business. Rather, it is about releasing human potential by building an organization free of the burdens of stifling bureaucracy (based on distrust), overly aggressive targets, misaligned incentives, suffocating and inflexible controls (like budgets and strategies that presume stability, predictability and top-down control).

A resilient, dynamic business is one that encourages and engages people to think,  collaborate, perform, learn and get better. For that alone is the basis of success in the new world order.

Topics include:

  • The reasons why most organizations today ignore the need to change
  • Management models and the realities of the new world order
  • What dictates organizational success: Where to change your game
  • Enablers: Little things that make a huge, sustainable difference
  • Capabilities that foster advantage and what you actually pay for
  • Game changers that involve and energize your intellectual capital
  • What/who is a "game changer"? What do they do? How do they do it?
  • Achieving organizational clarity: The critical genes that drive success
  • Why strategic plans today are flawed and what to replace them with
  • Designing a business model that delivers real customer value
  • Why "culture eats strategy" for lunch and how to fix yours
  • Building a culture of openness, learning, innovation and resilience
  • Success is dangerous and failure is inevitable: So capitalize on it
  • Game Changers:  New rules, new values, new tools and a different future