Informal Brain

Change management is a tricky subject and is something that has been on my mind for some months now. I have realized that being recognized as an effective change agent requires understanding the psychology of change and knowing where your audience is spread along the change transition curve at any given time.

The change transition curve, shown here:

… provides a way to think about where your audience lies along the curve. At the beginning of any change naturally folks quickly move to a place called “Endings”. At the endings point the audience for change begins to understand they need to give up the old way of doing things. This typically generates a great deal of discomfort and pushes them into the Pit of Despair or as it is also known “The Neutral Zone”. The goal of any change agent is to move the audience out of the Pit of Despair to a state of “New Beginnings” where they accept the change and integrate with the change.

It is important to understand that the audience can be analyzed in many discrete groups with the transition curve. You can analyze where the entire audience is at. You can break down your audience based on criticality for the change to succeed and even break down the audience to discrete members. At any given time these groups may be at many places along the curve.

For example at a macro level the entire change audience may be viewed as moving to “New Beginnings” but some members of the audience may still be in the Pit. Those outliers may be more damaging to the change success then is immediately realized. It is also important to recognize that the actions of an outlier or external forces can easily force the entire audience or certain members back into the Pit. The reinforcement phase of the ADKAR model serves to keep people at the New Beginnings point. It is important that the audience is hearing about the change requirements regularly and frequently post awareness and ability phases of any change.

So, in conclusion, think about the curve and where your audience is at. Think big picture and consider the individuals you are targeting. At the lowest level, everyone needs to be driven along the curve and receive reinforcement to the New Beginnings to drive successful change.

via Magic/Replace - Data Cleanup for Everyone from Dabble DB

Magic replace provides the set of tools you always wished Microsoft would build into Excel.  Have you ever wanted to easily split 100s of cells based on a common rule, or reformat values on the fly.  The problem is typically you end up concocting many LEFT() / RIGHT() / MID() combinations to get it right.  Typically with lots of debugging in-between.  

Magic Replace provides the easiest way to edit data I have ever seen.  Excel needs this tool badly…

When you are in a position of rolling out change to an IT environment the two most frustrating things you can hear are:

1. How come this is in stealth mode?

Typically what this means is you are running all over the place delivering the message right on target but somehow you have managed to miss the key target audience the person asking the question believes is critical to the success of the change.  Time to understand how to get out of stealth mode where it really matters!!

2. How long has it been since you have last seen this?

Arg, frequently the answer to this question is many shades of “too long”.  Rolling out change takes time, and lots of repeat performances of the same message over and over again.  Unfortunately with any change people naturally think the message has shifted during the last two weeks since they saw it last.  What they don’t understand is as a transition manager you are delivering the same message time and time again to different groups.  That three weeks has been spent delivering the same powerpoint 15 times, exactly the same way, with exactly the same message to 15 different groups.

Enterprise architects know how to connect with their customers. Unfortunately this relationship can become overwhelming when the architect suddenly becomes the single conduit to IT from the business. The architect / business relationship must not replace a strong service management framework with the IT delivery team. Infact, the architect should strive to drive work requests and incident resolution to the delivery team so they don’t die under the weight of a good relationship. Retain the relationship for healthy strategic dialog. Let the delivery organization become the customer for the tachtical work rather then the business.

Things. a relatively new player in the GTD (Getting things done) application space has really impressed me with their simple to use desktop client and powerful iPhone application. The combination gives you your task list in your pocket when you need it most, and allows you to do the heavy lifting on your Mac. The synchronization feature between the iPhone and desktop applications works flawlessly over WIFI which is very nice.

A few of my favorite features:

1. Simplicity: The guys at Cultured Code really understand how to build a set of applications which embody simplicity. They choose to use tags rather then columns, and a simple Drag and Drop UI. Very nice.

2. Today: I love that I can just drop a task to the today item and it is ready to be acted on right now.

3. Areas: I can organize my tasks easily to my areas of responsibility.

4. Projects: I can group a set of tasks which will drive out the execution of a project. Works well when you have multiple tasks to complete to wrap up an effort.

5. Sync: I can synchronize the iPhone and Desktop versions of the application quickly over WIFI.

6. Drag and Drop: I can easily drag and drop tasks between the different GTD action types.

One of my favorite iPhone applications called Byline by Phantom Fish has just been updated to version 2.0.

What an impressive update!

Here are some of the highlights:

1. Folders: You can now see each of your Google Reader folders.

2. Clean, fast new interface: The interface has been cleaned up. Gone are the flat blues and now we have a cool wood grained view which is easy on the eyes. And did I mention faster! The entire application is much faster to load new items.

3. Notes: You can now write notes while sharing items just like in the web based google reader application.

4. Built in Web Browser: No more sudden swaps to Safari. Now you can browse inside the application without switching. This is a favorite feature because I would frequently hit a link by mistake and swap to Safari. No more.

Now that bailout 1.0 is behind us it is time to start thinking about the future:

Bailout 2.0: Healthcare

We need a healthcare solution in the US which is cost effective for end users, and is available to all citizens regardless of their preexisting conditions, or financial situation. Perhaps the government can bail out the healthcare system next?

Bailout 3.0: The Environment

The environment, needs a bailout plan. We need to infuse capital into technology which can reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. This will help the US become a global leader in clean technology and will create new research and manufacturing jobs.

Sounds to me like these might be some great ways to spend our tax dollars? 1.2 Trillion to bail out the financial services industries. How much could bailout 2.0 and 3.0 cost?

There are two things Firefox can do that Safari can’t:

1. Set pipelining on. Although there is risk that the web servers can’t support pipelining it provides a nice speedup on a high-speed connection.

2. Allow tweaking of the Connections per server setting. This is technically against the recommendations of the w3c protocol but when you have lots of bandwidth you can really get a nice performance boost pulling down the attached images.

I wonder when Safari will support these settings? I wonder when the max connections per server will be increased by default?

Just another sign that IBM really “gets it” when it comes to iPhone security. I happen to work at a Lotus Notes shop and we have been taking a strong look at the iNotes Ultralite application for some time now. You may have seen some of my previous posts about the lack of enterprise level encryption for email on the iPhone. This is a show stopper for our company where we manage complex PHI (Personal Health Information) for our customers. We can’t afford to loose even one device (laptop, smart phone) which is not encrypted.

IBM is always concerned about data security for its customers, and as such they decided to make iNotes Ultralite a web app rather than a native iPhone application. IBM felt it was important to customers to insure that all communications between the iPhone and Lotus Domino server be encrypted, and that no data remain on the device in case it was lost or stolen.

[From iPhone in the Enterprise: Lotus iNotes Ultralite - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)]

I suspect we will see a native Notes application for the iPhone or a plugin for the native Mail application in the future when encryption is available. Until then, IBM is delivering what we need right now.