Journal Themes
Competitiveness and combativeness can work against persuasion, collaboration, and trust-building - key for both project and change work
A psychological orientation towards status, control, and self-protection may overpower the collaborative instincts that good project management usually requires. A few different bodies of literature speak to this. I wanted to dig further into some of these.
Why I deliberately lead people into ambivalence and encourage them to slow down meaning-making
One of the most counterintuitive things I do when preparing a major change announcement, a team away day, or the launch of a high-risk, uncertain project is I discourage people from reaching a decision too quickly.
Transformation projects have a human undercurrent
When people work on a transformation programme, they are not always just delivering tasks; they may also be living with uncertainty about their role, their team, their managers, their status, their expertise, their workload, and sometimes their future employment.
What undermines problem‑solving during business change?
Every transformation introduces friction. These frictions are temporary problems created by the act of transition. They are not defects in the plan, they are the point at which the plan meets reality.
Careful use of carrots & sticks for motivating change
In a period of transition, rewarding the highest target, the fastest adopter, or the top scorer is a mistake.
Change management is about far more than managing resistance
While resistance is real and ever‑present, it is only one piece of a much wider and more valuable discipline.
Beyond performance management
For decades, management has been framed around a single dominant idea: managing people to a defined performance standard. But that framing becomes limiting when organisations are trying to change, not just perform.
