Four Concepts for Running Your Organization

Bill BancroftPeople Development, Potato Sack Chronicles

Where do you stand on the four concepts below for running your organization? More important, where do you want your organization to stand in the future? The concepts go to the heart of how organizations get things done… how they articulate purpose, mission, what they must do to reach goals, what goes in their annual plan, what competencies they need …

Why Change Projects in Organizations Fail

Bill BancroftCulture, Potato Sack Chronicles

Urgency about the need to get things done… some faces of microlending in Honduras… The Grove Consultant International’s strategic visioning workshop in Dallas on Sept. 9-11, 2009 at Southern Methodist University. All are items in this letter. Stop a minute to ponder why change projects in organizations fail. And the long-term consequences of those failed efforts. Lots of stats and …

Toss More Tomatoes In The Tomato Soup?

Bill BancroftPeople Development, Potato Sack Chronicles

Toss more tomatoes into the tomato soup? In this economy? Are you crazy? Most say they can’t afford to. Cutting expenses, downsizing workforces, putting the “soft stuff” on hold… that’s what they must do to hang on…despite the hurt those cuts will cause their organizations, cultures, processes, remaining people. They ask, what else can we do? Some say they can’t …

Strategizing In Honduras

Bill BancroftPotato Sack Chronicles, Strategy

I’m back from Honduras where I led a strategic visioning project with the leaders of Santa Cruz Arriba, a small, rural community on the outskirts of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. Sometimes, clarity is found way outside daily norms. Take yourself out of your company or organization, out of your daily routine, your normal living situation. Thrust yourself into a …

Bettering The Odds For Successful Change

Bill BancroftCulture, Potato Sack Chronicles

Results for change projects are dismal. Only 20-plus percent of change projects succeed. The rest fail. Why? It’s important for clients to know. It’s important for change practitioners to know. Especially since so many more people are showing up inside and out of companies and other organizations seeking to help with change. There is truth to the notion that change …

Defining Leadership: The Art Of Creation

Bill BancroftPeople Development, Potato Sack Chronicles

Take a group of 20 or so smart people. Put them in a room. Ask them to share a story of the best leadership they have ever experienced – either leadership they demonstrated or leadership they witnessed. Then ask what the underlying leadership traits were. The answers will nearly always look something like this: The leader set an example. He …