I.T., Leadership and Creativity

Tyner Bain has a large pile of articles covering the vexed issue of Requirements Management. He is also a Scrum Master, which is a delivery approach that I have tried in the past with some success.

...are very common in most businesses. We are all wearily familiar with the change initiative launched in a blaze of glory by the CEO that rapidly becomes a joke within the corporation, fizzles out and leaves everybody connected with it frustrated or burned.
One challenge is that changing fundamental ways of doing things in a corporation requires a lot of people to put aside existing ways not only of working, but viewing the world. This often collides with the deep values of the people. They suffer from irresolvable cognitive dissonances trying to do so, and back off, especially if they suspect that the initiaitive is merely "CEO Hot Button Of The Year" (which it often is). This mindset is bolstered by the fact that in many corporations, the tenure of front-line workers greatly exceeds that of leaders, who often move onto new roles within 3-4 years. Workers who do not want to embrace the change can simply wait out the change until the promoting leader moves on, then continue in old behaviours.
When chellenged overtly to change, many people respond with dysfunctional behaviours running the whole spectrum from over resistance to covert resistance, bluster, bullying and other unpleasant outbursts. Many times, these behaviours are tolerated because as humans, we tend to shy away from confrontation. For every guy who wants to wade into a fight, there are 20 or so who want to ignore it.
This website deals with some of the issues surrounding dysfunctional behaviour and resistance to change in corporations. I may try to attend some of their webinars. I am going to expand this posting as I find other useful resources.