Elon Musk talks Twitter, Tesla and how his brain works — live at TED2022

Whether it’s a large Lean transformation initiative or a rapid improvement event, it’s very easy to focus on getting to the end state solution design and, in doing so, to miss the point completely.

This year has certainly been an emotional roller-coaster for many of us. When a change is thrust upon us it may be useful to understand that the emotions we’re feeling follow a pattern and that pattern is similar for most of us

With change an essential part of every business, it’s ever more critical that we focus on managing change successfully. A startlingly high number of change initiatives are unsuccessful, with the odds firmly in favour of failure. We take a look behind those numbers to see what’s happening and how we can stack the odds in our favour.

Is the retail sector teaching us a valuable lesson? Why are previously successful businesses failing to keep the initiative? And what can other sectors learn?

Apparently 85% of what we do is driven by habit. Think about driving a car or doing mundane chores at home, often we’re lost in thought and only barely conscious of what we’re doing. Habits can work for us or against us. In this excellent book and TED talk Charles Duhigg shows us how we can hack our less useful habits to create new, better ones. And the real eye opener for me was the realisation that an organisation can have group habits too and they can equally be productive or destructive.

The psychological toll of a toxic workplace culture cannot be overstated, once it takes hold it spreads and the human cost is profound.