IBM's RTO Policy and Stick, Stick, Stick
William Dodson, REAPChange?
??AI Trust & Safety Practice Director, REAP|Change? | ??Developer, The REAP|Change? AI Safety Culture Builder for Entrepreneurs to assure AI product safety BEFORE deployment | Author | Publisher
Clearly, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna nor his HR department read my newsletter articles about how leveraging "a stick" to drive wholesale change is a bad idea. Simply put, it pisses people off.
IBM managers in the U.S. are required to be in-office for at least three days a week, as per a Jan. 16 internal memo sent to Bloomberg.
Senior Vice President John Granger stated that managers not living within 50 miles of an IBM facility must relocate or leave by August.?
CEO Arvind Krishna emphasized the preference for on-site work, implying that remote workers may face promotion limitations.?
Nevertheless, the company plans unspecified job cuts in 2024. So, even if staff ups-sticks and moves nearby an IBM office, the company may still fire them.?
Perhaps behind closed doors FOMO is a driving force: IBM fears missing out on joining the Gen AI herd on the West Coast. They may also feel the company is on a Burning Platform, since Watson did not pan out as an industry disruptor, as they had hoped.?
And forget the Narrative driver of change: Krishna has trashed that IBM legacy.
The LENS Business Change Drivers
I've written quite a lot the past few weeks about the LENS process for initiating change in an organization. Here, I'll provide a summary listing of the articles for easier reference.
Recall, there are four levers in the LENS model of Business Change Drivers. One or a combination of the four will align Leadership within its own circle, Leadership with Management, and both with the rest of the organization to achieve a singular corporate objective:
Leverage – the carrot and stick approach
Environment – also known as the Burning Platform (see Digital Luddite article)
Narrative – extolling corporate mythology
Sympathetic – fear of missing out (FOMO)
Available through CosimoPublishing.com in digital format and Amazon Kindle.
"…It showcases strategic insights and provides a good foundational knowledge on how to leverage AI ..." — Nils B., Entrepreneur
I call it the real politik of change management, in which the reality is that no matter how much staff may want change, the power to change is in the hands of Leadership. If Leadership is misaligned — typically through the self-interest of the members — then the sustained change that achieves business objectives will not occur.?
I've never seen it otherwise.???
Here are the articles I've published, organized by driver:
Leverage
How HR Policy Can Avert HR from Becoming AR (Artificial Resources) (sample included)
IBM's RTO Policy and Stick, Stick, Stick
Environment — Burning Platform
领英推荐
Narrative
X Marks the Spot: The Narrative that Could Have Been (sample included)
General Electric and the Ghost of Thomas Edison (sample included)
Sympathetic — FOMO
As we all learned back in high school from our English writing teachers: say what you're going to talk about; talk about it; then tell what you talked about.
Next up: articles about Essential Change Communications. I'll discuss the five essential characteristics of corporate change communications during business transitions:
Simplicity — One piece, one message
Consistency — make sure the message is the same no matter who views it
Audience — know who you're communicating to
Alignment? — make sure the message is the same throughout the program
Medium — the "medium" is the message, as Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1964: produce appropriately for the channel
NOTE: (HINT: the RTO policy I mentioned above may actually fit within the 4 Essentials. If so, then staff beware — you're in for a rocky road.)?
William Dodson troubleshoots Technology Change Management & Corporate Communications Programs.
Contact him for advise or intervention in corporate communications or technology implementations that are confusing staff or creating employee resistance to Change: [email protected].
He is a former Organizational Change Management senior consultant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, BearingPoint, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Cap Gemini-Sogeti.
His most recent books include:
"Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders: The Essential Guide to Understanding and Applying AI in Organizations (2023, Cosimo Publishing, LLC), 100 pp. ISBN 979-8-9884070-7-2. In digital format and Amazon Kindle.
"The New 'Teacher's Pet': A.I. Ethical Dilemmas in Education and How to Resolve Surveillance, Authenticity, and Learning Issues" (2023, Cosimo Publishing, LLC), 77 pp. ISBN 979-8-9884070-8-9. Kindle edition: https://bit.ly/3TMrwDA
??AI Trust & Safety Practice Director, REAP|Change? | ??Developer, The REAP|Change? AI Safety Culture Builder for Entrepreneurs to assure AI product safety BEFORE deployment | Author | Publisher
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??AI Trust & Safety Practice Director, REAP|Change? | ??Developer, The REAP|Change? AI Safety Culture Builder for Entrepreneurs to assure AI product safety BEFORE deployment | Author | Publisher
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