Eclectic Change

IBM Introduces Center for CIO Leadership Development on the heels of their 2008 Global Human Capital Study

To address the increasing role that Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are playing in developing and executing business strategies, IBM announced earlier this month the creation of the Center for CIO Leadership. The Center will also be engaged in research tackling issues that CIOs face and measuring attitudes and needs of CIOs. To kick off the research, IBM conducted a survey of 175 CIO in conjunction with Harvard Business School and MIT's Center for Information Systems Research. Some of the fin...

The Strategic Project Leader: Mastering Service-Based Project Leadership

The Strategic Project Leader – Congratulations Jack One of our colleagues and resident Project Manger expert, Jack Ferraro has just has his book “The Strategic Project Leader: Mastering Service-Based Project Leadership” which can be found on Amazon. It is a REAL book! Sandy reviewed the book and here is what she had to say (it is on the back cover and on the Amazon listing): [this] book walks us through what it takes to be more than just a project leader, but to be a service-based proje...

Sustainabilty and the Global Village

The McKinsey Review recently conducted as part of their strategy sections the following interview: Investing in sustainability: An interview with Al Gore and David Blood What I found most interesting is how the article starts: As McKinsey research indicates, executives around the world increasingly recognize that the creation of long-term shareholder value depends on a corporation’s ability to understand and respond to increasingly intense demands from society.1 1. The research, summarize...

Trade secrets: surviving a merger – navigating the M&A minefield

By Scott Moeller (This article first appeared in Personnel Today magazine) It looks as though more mergers and acquisitions (M&As) will have taken place in 2007 than ever before. But two things never change about M&A deals: first, that a large number will fail to deliver what the architects of the deal promised and second, that many people will lose their jobs when companies combine - after all, who needs two heads of HR or the support team for two payroll systems? It's also an unfortu...

The Future of Management – Book Review and Leadership Innovation

"For the first time since the dawning of the industrial age, the only way to build a company that's fit for the future is to build one that's fit for human beings as well." (Gary Hamel) I am not sure that this is in fact accurate. There are many small businesses over the years often family owned that have based their success on what we call today "Human Talent". To me, as a Organizational Development practitioner, I have always believed this to be the only way we can build healthy organization...

Can the KLM and Air France merger continue to meet shareholder expectations?

I came across an interesting article last week from the Hindu News entitled: Brand-asset due diligence needed in acquisitions written by D Murali. Do companies conduct brand-asset due diligence as part of their acquisition process? “Rarely,” says Mr F. Joseph LePla, co-author of ‘Brand Driven’ and ‘Integrated Branding’. He explains his company's approach: The heart of our due diligence model is based on the belief that to understand the real value of a transaction, you need to keep customer...

Workshop: Aligning Post-Merger Culture: From Multiple Visions to Collaborative Leadership

Sandy and I arrived home from Edinburgh yesterday after presenting at the International Association of Facilitators. Based on our White Paper: Leading Cross Cultural Re-engagement: Creating Post Merger Identity. We were very pleased with both our simulation and the caliber of those who chose to participate. It was full of emotion and we hope solid learning. Nineteen joined us and all stayed throughout the full three hours. The workshop represented an abbreviated simulation to help individual...

Intelligent Mergers

I have just added a link to Intelligent Mergers in our Blogroll. I was impressed by the content and I am sure I will be quoting them in future postings. The blog is written by Scott Moeller, one of the two authors of the book on the use of business and military intelligence in M&A deals. The article that made me aware of the site was: Surviving a merger: Don’t think it can’t happen to you! I am quoting it in full since the work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercia...