McKinsey’s infamous stat haunts every executive: 70% of all change management efforts fail. Despite decades of expertise, this number seems frozen in time. Why?
In the 35th episode of the Leadership 2.0 podcast, I sat down with a true transformation veteran, Rupert Brown, author of the eye-opening book, ‘Lost in Transformation’.
Rupert is an experienced Chief People Officer and change management specialist with deep expertise in M&A, digital transformation, and turnarounds, having advised giants like Procter & Gamble and Maersk.
This wasn’t just a discussion of tactics; it was a candid, emotionally intelligent discussion on how Transformations can be handled better.
Tune in to learn about:
Why Transformation projects continue to fail
The difference between Change and Transformation
The Bad Reputation of the word ‘Transformation’
Why we still struggle with Change Management
In-Groups and Out-Groups in Change Management Processes
Chief Acceleration Officers
Trust is Energy
Crises as Catalysts for Change
The impact of our Permacrisis on Change Management
Behavioral Skills to cope with the BANI world’
Change Management and AI
If you’re leading a transformation—or struggling to survive one—you can’t afford to miss this. Rupert delivers the hard truths and the practical guidance needed to shift from ‘being Lost’ to becoming ‘the Leader of change’.
► You can watch or listen to a podcast with our conversation on:
Earlier this week, one of the most important business books on the Future of Work was published by Harvard Business Review Press: ‘Employment Is Dead: How Disruptive Technologies Are Revolutionizing the Way We Work’ by Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean.
The central theme of this book is that traditional employment models are becoming outdated due to the evolving needs and expectations of the modern workforce, in combination with, and enabled by, disruptive technologies.
This will lead to the end of the traditional employment model, as well as the traditional form of companies, as we know them today.
Monday, just hours before the book was released, I had the chance to interview Deborah Perry Piscione for my Leadership 2.0 Podcast.
► In our conversation, we touched on the following topics:
In many recruitment processes, human beings are reduced to commodities, and human dignity has become an afterthought.
More often than not, recruitment has become a volume-driven exercise, where metrics like ‘time to fill’ have replaced the craftsmanship essential for identifying the best candidate for the role. As a result, candidates often find these processes unsatisfactory, as their potential unique contributions and value to organizations are not adequately recognized.
FOUND, a Swiss-based start-up company, wants to disrupt this traditional approach to recruitment. I recently interviewed Victor Akwunwa, the Chief Sales Officer of FOUND for my Leadership 2.0 podcast.
During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:
There are some companies I deeply admire, and On, the Swiss sports and apparel brand is definitely one of them! Not only do they make amazing products and have an extremely powerful brand, they also have a unique company culture.
For this reason, I was thrilled to sit down with Alessandra Del Pino, Head of Engagement & Talent Growth at On, to discuss the company culture of On, or, as Alessandra describes it, their ‘secret sauce’.
During our conversation, we covered the following topics:
I coach several people who are looking for another role, and it seems that the user satisfaction with the average recruitment process is even worse than in 2018, when I wrote a blog post with the title: ‘Recruiters should stop spraying and praying’.
In this post I wrote ‘We should therefore not be surprised if, in the near future, recruitment will become an AI-fuelled war between recruiting bots used by corporate recruiters, and application bots used by candidates.’
Today it looks like my predictions have become reality.
A ’sub-optimal’ candidate experience
What are the frustrations on the supply side of the market i.e. from the candidates? Here are the things I hear from my coachees:
With the publication of his bestseller ‘HR Champions’ in 1997, Dave Ulrich signaled the potential for HR functions to develop themselves from ‘administrative support functions’ into strategic and mission-critical ones (my words—not Dave’s!).
The book served as a catalyst for a vast number of HR organizations to critically review their roles, activity portfolios and structures. As a result, many organizations defined HR strategies, and initiated HR transformation projects to realize these.
All in all, Dave published over 200 articles and book chapters and over 30 books. He edited Human Resource Management 1990-1999, served on the editorial board of 4 other journals and on the Board of Directors for Herman Miller (16 years), has spoken to large audiences in 90 countries; performed workshops for over half of the Fortune 200; coached successful business leaders, and is a Distinguished Fellow in the National Academy of Human Resources.
During our conversation, Dave and I discussed the following topics:
‘I defy anybody to be energized by most appraisal systems I have seen in my career’ – Sally Bibb
As HR professionals and line managers (present company included!), we tend to take the strengths of our staff for granted and focus most of our attention on their ‘development areas’ (a euphemism for weaknesses).
The question is, however, how effective this is, and which business opportunities we miss, by following this approach.
Sally Bibb, partner at PA Consulting, leader and author in the field of strengths-based approaches to people and organisations, proposes a radically different approach and advocates focusing on strengths instead of weaknesses.
To find out what Strength Management is, and how we can implement it, I interviewed her for my Leadership 2.0 podcast.
During our conversation, Sally and I discussed the following topics:
0️⃣1️⃣ What Strength Management is
0️⃣2️⃣ How Sally became interested in the topic
0️⃣3️⃣ Is Strength Management incompatible with a Growth Mindset?
0️⃣4️⃣ Why most HR professionals remain focused on Development Areas
0️⃣5️⃣ Implementing Strength Management in HR Processes
0️⃣6️⃣ How can appraisals be improved?
0️⃣7️⃣ Is strength management a generational phenomenon?
0️⃣8️⃣ Will AI support Strength Management?
0️⃣9️⃣ Issues Sally is asked to address by her clients
➡️ No time to watch or listen to podcast now? Here is a short summary of our conversation ⤵
Dirk Verburg: I was classically trained as a line manager to focus on development areas to create “all-round” people. What are the advantages of focusing on a person’s strengths instead?
Sally Bibb: A strength is something you are naturally drawn to, that energizes you, and that you’re good at. Twenty years of neurobiological evidence shows that when people use their strengths, they are happier, more resilient, and perform better. Football managers, for example, know each player’s strengths and don’t try to make them all-rounders. While a team can be good at everything, an individual cannot. Focusing on strengths is not about ignoring weaknesses, but about intentionally using what you’re great at. Spending too much time on things you’re not good at will cause your motivation to drop, and your performance will be good at best—not great.
Dirk Verburg: Where does your personal interest in strengths come from? Did you have an experience that inspired you to focus on this topic?
Sally Bibb: My interest stems from an early experience in my career. I was promoted from a job I loved, which involved crewing ships, to one that required doing research for trade union negotiations. I was good at the first job because it leveraged my strengths in connecting with people and problem-solving. The second job, however, was a poor fit. I felt a loss of confidence and didn’t understand why until years later at a conference. A Harvard professor spoke about the emerging field of positive psychology and focusing on what’s right with people. That was a lightbulb moment for me. I realized there was nothing wrong with me; I was just a square peg in a round hole. This experience inspired me to study what makes great salespeople so successful, which was my first foray into applying strengths to the workplace.
Dirk Verburg: How do you see the relationship between strengths management and the desire to adopt a “growth mindset”? Are they contradictory, or do they strengthen each other?
Sally Bibb: I think they are highly complementary. A growth mindset—the belief that you can learn and grow—is important whether you are playing to your strengths or working on something you’re not good at. The growth mindset is not about being good at everything, but about being open to learning. For example, I worked with an executive who had never been in an innovative environment before. By having a growth mindset, he discovered a new strength in “joining the dots” and making connections. Had he not been open to this, he might have boxed himself in, assuming he wasn’t an innovative person. A growth mindset helps you discover new strengths and apply existing ones to new challenges.
Dirk Verburg: Why do you think many people in HR and talent management still focus so much on areas of development, even though the thinking has moved on?
Sally Bibb: I think a lot of it is organizational inertia. Organizations tend to do what they’ve always done, like using traditional competency frameworks and appraisal systems, even when they know these systems don’t energize people or get the best results. The organizations I work with that adopt a strengths-based approach do so because they want different outcomes, like improved performance and morale. Adopting this approach is a gradual process that requires a leader with a clear focus and determination to change things. I hope that in the next ten years, a strengths-based approach will be the norm, with new generations of leaders recognizing the benefits of this way of thinking.
Dirk Verburg: How would you practically conduct a strengths-based interview?
Sally Bibb: First, you have to know what strengths are needed for the role. For example, we studied the strengths of exemplary midwives in charge of labor wards. We found that the best ones share certain strengths beyond their clinical competencies, like a strong sense of doing the right thing. In a strengths-based interview, you ask candidates about those specific strengths. For example, “Tell me about a time when you had to ensure the right thing was done.” If it is a genuine strength, you can see their face light up and they can easily provide examples. In contrast, if you don’t know what “great” looks like for that role, a strengths interview is difficult to do effectively. The key is to match the candidate’s natural inclinations with the specific strengths that you know are critical for success in that job.
Dirk Verburg: What can we do to make classic performance interviews more meaningful by applying a strengths-based approach?
Sally Bibb: A strengths-based performance discussion should be an ongoing conversation throughout the year, not just a one-off event. It should focus on three things: the strengths you’re using regularly, the strengths you have that you might not be using, and the “weaknesses that matter”—the ones that are really getting in your way. Instead of criticizing, you can have a collaborative conversation about how to mitigate those weaknesses. This could involve using your strengths to compensate, getting help from colleagues, or finding ways to avoid the task altogether. This approach makes people feel relaxed and authentic because they don’t have to pretend to be perfect. The conversation becomes focused on potential and how to make the person even better at what they already do well.
Dirk Verburg: I have the impression that focusing on strengths comes more naturally to younger generations than to baby boomers or millennials. Would you agree with that observation?
Sally Bibb: That’s an interesting observation, and I’m not aware of any specific research on it. However, people in their 20s and 30s were raised in an era of “positive parenting” and a greater focus on self-esteem. They are often less modest and more willing to talk about their strengths. In contrast, older generations can be more modest. This is also culturally influenced. In the United States, people are generally more comfortable discussing their strengths, whereas in the UK and Switzerland, modesty can be a national sport. I see modesty as being a bit overrated, as not talking about your strengths can inhibit your ability to serve others and be overlooked for opportunities.
Dirk Verburg: You work with very big clients. What are the starting points for you in those conversations when a client wants to think about a strengths-based approach?
Sally Bibb: Clients rarely ask for a strengths-based approach directly. They come with business problems like: “We need to improve our performance,” “We need to improve our safety,” or “We need to improve staff morale and engagement.” These are the real-world problems that a strengths-based approach can solve. When clients see the impact of this approach, they like it because it connects with people and makes common sense. It’s not just a psychometric tool; it translates into hard returns and measurable outcomes. The private equity sector, for example, has been a leader in this thinking because they know that having the right combination of strengths in a leadership team is critical to a successful investment.
Dirk Verburg: We’ve discussed a lot of elements around strengths. Is there anything we haven’t touched on that you would like to mention?
Sally Bibb: There’s just one thing that’s very dear to my heart. From women in prison to senior executives, people often don’t really know their strengths or their value. The strengths-based approach makes people feel good about themselves and the contribution they make. This is the best starting point for helping people realize their potential. If we could bring this thinking into the public and political arena, there would be less burnout, less imposter syndrome, and more satisfaction and engagement at work. It’s a win-win-win for individuals, employers, and society as a whole.
▶ About Sally Bibb
She started her career working for BT International and then moved into an international role at The Economist Group before founding the strengths consultancy Engaging Minds in 2012. In 2021, she joined PA Consulting as a partner to advance her vision of bringing strengths to many more employers worldwide.
In this role, she leads strengths-based organizational change work in Europe, the USA, and Asia, and has built a track record of achieving transformational results for a number of high-profile clients in both the private, as well as in the public sector.
Sally has an MSc in organizational change from the University of Surrey and has (co-)authored eight books. A full list can be found here: https://sallybibb.com/my-books/
She is a fellow of the RSA (Royal Society of Arts) and a member of the steering committee of The Daedalus Trust, a charity founded by Lord David Owen to promote research into hubris syndrome in business.
‘We live in a world of organizations – and we do not understand them’
This is one of the statements Henry Mintzberg, one of the leading thinkers in the field of Management, made when I interviewed him for my Leadership 2.0 Podcast about his latest book ‘Understanding Organizations…Finally’.
During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:
0️⃣1️⃣ The importance for organizations to get their structure ‘right’ 0️⃣2️⃣ The evolvement of Henry’s thinking about organizations 0️⃣3️⃣ ‘Every (organization) form contains the seeds of its own destruction’ 0️⃣4️⃣ ‘Emergent structures’ versus large-scale reorganizations 0️⃣5️⃣ The fit between the leader and the structure of the organization 0️⃣6️⃣ The structures of Apple and Tesla and the personalities of their founders 0️⃣7️⃣ The complementary role of conflict and culture in organizations 0️⃣8️⃣ The relationship between the structure and the culture of an organization 0️⃣9️⃣ The gap between formulators and implementers of corporate strategies 1️⃣0️⃣ The interest in structuring organizations in academia and business
You can watch or listen to this podcast episode on:
The World Health Organization estimates that 12 billion working days are lost every year due to depression and anxiety. This costs $1 trillion in lost productivity.
McKinsey research showed that ‘60 % of employees have experienced at least one mental-health challenge at some point in their lives’. According to the same study ‘Failing to address the effects of mental health and well-being challenges is a missed opportunity for employers’.
Employees dealing with mental health issues are 4x more likely to say they intend to leave, 3x more likely to report low job satisfaction, 3x more likely to experience toxic workplace behavior, and 2x more likely to report low engagement.
At the same time, classic Employee Assistance Programs do not seem to work…
Vlad Gheorghiu experienced mental health issues firsthand, whilst working for McKinsey.
This experience inspired him to design solutions. First for McKinsey, and later by co-finding a start-up company called Kyan Health.
In my conversation with Vlad, we covered the following topics:
1️⃣ Vlad’s background
2️⃣ Vlad’s engagement with mental health
3️⃣ The gap in the workplace between the mental health support employees need and receive
4️⃣ The concept of Kyan Health
5️⃣ Measuring impact
6️⃣ Creating a start-up company: Three Dos
7️⃣ Creating a start-up company: Three Dont’s
8️⃣ Vlad’s role models as an entrepreneur
If you are interested, you can watch our conversation on YouTube.
Everyone is an expert in Leadership Development, or at least has an opinion about it.
However, if that is the case, why do global organizations spend more than $60 billion every year on leadership development programs, but is it so hard to ensure the ROI of these programs?
To find the answer to this question, I decided to interview Ayse Yemiscigil for my Podcast Leadership 2.0.
Ayse Yemiscigil is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business and a Research Affiliate with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University.
In February 2023, she, Dana Born, and Horace Ling, published an article for HBR.org of the Harvard Business Review titled: ‘What Makes Leadership Development Programs Succeed?’
During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:
reflect on their own role and behaviors to prevent self-fulfilling prophecies,
release control if they want to make things happen, and
consider creating ‘a sense of belonging’ instead of ‘burning platforms’
if they want to implement deep and sustainable behavioral change in their organizations…
These were just some of the topics I discussed with the management consultant and change management guru (although he would reject that classification!) Arend Ardon.
Arend wrote a number of bestsellers in the area of change management and leadership, and is the co-founder and co-owner of the Change Studio, a consultancy firm specializing in change management and leadership.
During our conversation, Arend and I discussed the following topics:
Recently I had a conversation with Saskia Schepers about her book on Neurodiversity in the workplace with the title ‘Als alle breinen werken – Waarom ruimte voor neurodiversiteit op het werk goed is voor iedereen’ (‘When all brains are switched on – Why space for neurodiversity in the workplace benefits everyone’).
Around 80% of mankind is neurotypical, and 20% is neurodivergent. We tend to ‘equip’ people in the latter category with labels like ADD, DHD, bipolar, autistic, etc.
Most leaders find it hard to integrate neurodivergent people in their teams.
The reason is that most of us have preconceived ideas about the way people in the workplace should behave. For instance, we expect people to like attending and participating in meetings, do their work in teams, be productive in open-plan offices, and socialize with their colleagues after work.
People who do not fit this mold are seen as bad ‘team players’, and are often criticized for this behavior, e.g. during annual performance review meetings.
The book almost immediately reached the number 1 position in the Dutch bestseller list of management books, was quickly sold out, and is now in its third printed edition.
An English translation is in the making and will be published in 2024.
During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:
In short, self management simply means ‘no bosses’. That’s it (Geoff Roberts)
Thinking back on your highschool school days, do you remember the popular child with its entourage deciding which music, movies and influences were in, or out; whose parties everyone wanted to be invited to? Did you also have a bully at school who terrorized the schoolyard with his accomplices, when no supervising adults were around? Perhaps you also remember the importance of being ‘befriended’ with children in the class whose parents had a swimming pool; and I am sure you also had someone in class whose homework you and everybody else wanted to copy.
YouTube
I thought the concept of self-managing teams had already died a well deserved death, until I recently saw a clip on YouTube. The clip advocates the concept of self-managing teams by comparing the productivity of self-managing teams with the traffic flow through a roundabout. Different scenarios are compared to ensure the most effective flow to cross an intersection: with or without human supervision, with traffic lights and finally with the creation of a roundabout. Spoiler alert: the roundabout wins. Moral of the story is that in the absence of central control participants will self-regulate the responsibility to cross the intersection, and that by doing so productivity and safety will increase.
I am stunned by the enthusiasm for this clip, because I think the parallel between teamwork and crossing an intersection is incredibly weak. I would even go so far as to say it is non-existent.
I spent a significant part of my working life developing leaders in organizations. What strikes me is that during COVID-19 the demand for this type of work has not decreased; if anything, the demand for leadership development has increased. That is remarkable. During the financial crisis in 2007-2008, for instance, most companies tried to save money, and one of the first things they considered was decreasing the out-of-pocket costs associated with these, and other kind of developmental activities.
Recently I was asked why companies continue to invest in the quality of their leadership at all levels of the organizations, despite the economic uncertainty they are facing.
In my opinion, the reason is that companies have come to realize the growing importance of the quality of leadership at all levels of the organization. I believe that this is a good thing, especially because leadership roles have become more demanding in the last couple of decades, not only for senior leaders, but also for first, and second-level leaders in organizations.
One of my core beliefs as a management consultant is that the root cause of why change projects fail is the lack of a clear and convincing business case. In my experience, the vast majority of people are willing to change (even if this change has negative implications for them), as long as they understand the rationale behind the change and have the means (resources) to change.
However, I also have come across a number of people who did not want to change, even when there was a clear need to do so, and they had all the required capabilities and resources at their disposal.
A couple of days ago my bible app opened with this verse of the day: ‘To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice’ (Proverbs 21:3).
This text reminded me of the way some companies deal with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Rather than doing the right thing, they do the wrong thing and compensate for this by deploying CSR initiatives. There is even a special term describing this phenomenon: ‘Greenwashing’. In this context, it is no wonder that two professors from IMD (a leading Swiss Business School) published an article in 2018 with the provocative title: ‘Why nobody takes corporate social responsibility seriously’.
Let me start with a confession:I never liked receiving negative feedback, and have spent the largest part of my professional life ignoring it.
I found ignoring negative (or perhaps I should euphemistically say ‘corrective’) feedback to be quite easy. Depending on the situation, I either did not take the person who gave me feedback seriously (‘that is rich – from him?’), comforted myself that the feedback concerned only a minor issue in the grand scheme of my behavior (and that other aspects of my behavior would compensate this), or convinced myself that the person giving me feedback did not understand the context in which I acted the way I did or said the things I said.
It was not until I hit a serious roadblock in my career, that I started to see the fact that systematically ignoring feedback was not necessarily a great idea.
Employee engagement is a topic close to my heart. In the past two decades I have designed, managed and implemented the findings of engagement surveys multiple times, and also managed to write an article with my point of view on how to make them ‘work’.
Given my interest in this topic, I was very pleased to receive a copy of ‘The Art of Employee Engagement’ by Marijn Faassen. I read it in one go, because I found it a fascinating read, for a number of reasons:
In the 1970s and 1980s, authenticity and self-development in the workplace were considered to be important by many middle and senior managers in the Western world. Perhaps too important: organizations were sometimes seen as narcissistic vehicles for self-development, instead of entities that should serve the interests of their shareholders and/or other stakeholders.
This orientation changed dramatically in the first half of the 1990s. Two popular business books that were published during that time perfectly illustrate this change. The first one was ‘Valuation’ (1990), a book written by Copeland, Koller and Murrin (three McKinsey consultants), the second one ‘Emotional intelligence’ by David Goleman (1995).
Why I consider ‘Lost and Founder’ by Rand Fishkin to be a must read
At the beginning of my career, I managed a high profile ERP project. A couple of weeks before the go-live deadline, the customer introduced completely new requirements but did not want to shift the deadline. Needless to say, this significantly compromised the amount of time available for testing, something every available textbook warns one about. However, due to a combination of intimidating behavior of the customer, my own unwarranted optimism and lack of experience, I agreed to implement these new requirements and limit the amount of time available for testing. A decision which resulted in a rather ‘volatile’ go-live scenario which was highly visible for everyone in the company…
It is common wisdom that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. If anything, success has a tendency to make us complacent, whereas mistakes force us to take a step back, reflect on why our actions and behaviors did not work out as planned, and stimulate us to make changes in the way we approach opportunities and challenges.
The way the market for talent works is frustrating for all parties: both for corporate recruiters as well as for candidates. In order to change this, corporate recruiters should start acting as marketers that know their product and their customers.
The number one problem most corporate recruiters complain about nowadays is application overload. Thanks to LinkedIn and other Internet-based recruiting channels, candidates can ‘shoot at anything that moves’, i.e. submit their CV’s to apply for any opportunity that remotely interests them. As a result, processing applications is experienced as by corporate recruiters as ‘drinking from a fire hose’.
In the last couple of years it is extremely fashionable to bash annual performance reviews. A number of companies are publicly apologizing for the fact that they had them in first place, wondering aloud why they could ever have been so stupid, and demonstrate their remorse by publicly joining the ranks of the enlightened ones: those companies that abolished their annual performance review process.
In this context it is important to raise two questions, namely what the purpose of the annual performance review actually is and why it should be abolished.
Talent management originates from the late 1960s. Since then the business environment has changed dramatically. However, talent management practices in many organizations have not been adapted to cope effectively with these changes. This makes these organizations vulnerable to disruptions in their environment. Talent managers should therefore do three things to ensure their businesses have the necessary adaptive and innovative capabilities to cope with disruptions.
Almost 50 years ago, in 1968, Paul S. Ostrowski published an article with the title “Prerequisites for Effective Succession Planning”. This article is often seen as the starting point for Talent Management. The business environment at that time looked completely different from today:
Despite the importance of employee engagement, more and more organizations decide to cancel their employee engagement surveys due to a perceived lack of ROI. Leaders can make engagement surveys work however, by applying three simple principles.Continue reading →
According to Professor of Psychology Kip Williams, the human race ows its success to the fact that we learned to collaborate in groups. We learned that through organizing ourselves in tribes, we hugely increased our chances to survive in a hostile environment. The tribe enabled us to protect ourselves from wild animals, other tribes and food shortages.
The prospect of people who were being ‘ostracized’ (forced to leave the tribe) looked bleak. In pre-historic times, ostracism did not only result in social, but also in a certain physical death. People, who were kicked out of their ‘tribe’ and left to their own devices, were doomed to die, because they could not defend themselves effectively against predators, other tribes and could no longer collect sufficient food.
Because of the latent fears of ostracism that human beings have, managing human behavior by using this threat requires surprisingly little effort. Setting an example by ostracizing just a handful of individuals in a visible manner is enough to instill a sense of fear in a complete community.Continue reading →
The way the market for talent works is frustrating for all parties: both for corporate recruiters as well as for candidates. In order to change this, corporate recruiters should start acting as marketers that know their product and their customers.
Dirk Verburg 