Articles by Jeff Cole

Instead of fighting crime, some of us fight broken processes, waste, inefficiencies, and morale issues. Here Jeff Cole details the tools every change agent should have at their disposal. A highlight of my misspent youth was the first time I saw the television show Batman.  Those images burned their way into my skull and will remain forever emblazoned in my cerebral cortex. ...Full Article »

Famous quality guru W. Edwards Deming had a great quote that went something like this:  “You don’t need to change – your survival is not mandatory.”    Futurist Joel Barker notes that “When paradigms shift, everyone goes back to zero.”    Whether we like it or not, we’re in for a lot of change between now and...Full Article »

The eyes don't lie, writes Jeff Cole in this month's column. Watch carefully where your executive team is focused, and you'll discover some tricks on how to make change management happen yourself. What do magicians do that the rest of us don’t?  They pay very careful attention to where their audience looks.  For the magic to happen they need you looking in a very...Full Article »

Analogous to a black hole in astronomy, a black hole in change-lingo is where management communications and rhetoric go in and nothing is ever seen again, writes columnist Jeff Cole.  Success in leading organizational change means that you have achieved your objective on time, on budget, and when the dust settles there’re not a lot of dead bodies laying about.  By that I mean you...Full Article »

Managing any project involves risk, but projects requiring human behavioral change involve large amounts of risk.  This month, columnist Jeff Cole focuses on four key risk areas and how to better your odds for success. Pretend you just made a process improvement.  It’s taken you five months of hard effort, but you have devised a very clever way of making the process perform much...Full Article »

Customers are great.  In fact, it’s kind of hard to stay in business without them.  You have to love them, but at the same time they can be quite annoying.  Have you ever noticed how their requirements change over time?  Just when you think you had them figured out – Wham! – some requirement change comes out of left field to smack you in the head. While...Full Article »

What do Monty Python and guided missiles have to do with business performance improvement? asks columnist Jeff Cole. More than you might think.   Do you know John Cleese, the tall guy in the British comedy troupe?  Did you know that since the 1970’s he has run a company that produces humorous business training videos?  He stars in some of the videos...Full Article »

Ever feel like the tail that’s being wagged by the dog?  Technology is one big dog and if you don’t hold on you’ll get flung off hard and fast.  On a daily basis, technology upgrades storm through the corporate landscape sending out tsunamis of change in their wake.  It may even feel like the machines are winning - so how can you stay sane and...Full Article »

You can have the best process in the world but if the humans who need to follow that process don’t do so, you’ve wasted your time, says columnist Jeff Cole. For those readers that may just be starting out on their Lean Six Sigma journeys, here are a few tips when it comes to managing the human side of your Six Sigma project. The Secret Formula For years now there has been a simple...Full Article »

Have you reacted to changes you’ve encountered in life or have you responded to them?  Do you drive change on a daily basis or are you driven by change?  Who is in charge of all this change anyway?  This month, columnist Jeff Cole explores an interesting perspective on driving personal change. One of my favorite change authors is Daryl Conner.  In his best-seller...Full Article »

Culture devours massive amounts of well-intended process change throughout corporate America leaving unaware teams scratching their heads as they stare in amazement at the smoking wreckage of what was anticipated to be a simple process improvement.  Want to avoid chargrilled process change? Start with the basics, says Jeff Cole in this column from our archives. . I vividly recall a meeting...Full Article »