Keeping Today Running

Some of the hardest leadership work begins when change must happen and today’s obligations cannot wait.

Organizations cannot usually suspend their responsibilities while they change. Customers still need service. Employees need decisions. Existing commitments must be met. Yet introducing new systems, processes, and ways of working often depends on the same people and resources already sustaining daily performance. Approving the change does not resolve how both demands will be met.

Keeping Today Running examines what leaders must put in place to make that transition workable.

Drawing on organizational research and the practical demands of implementation, it explores how leaders protect essential operations, make room for additional work, sequence competing demands, and give people the authority to resolve conflicts. It examines the period when old and new arrangements coexist, the decisions required to retire redundant work, and the evidence needed to establish that the new operation can function without exceptional support.

Sustained performance can conceal an unsustainable arrangement. Backlogs may move elsewhere, temporary duties may become permanent, and committed employees may absorb work that the organization has never properly allocated. Leaders need to understand what is producing the results they see, and what must change before additional effort becomes the operating model.

For executives, transformation leaders, program directors, and managers responsible for delivering change while sustaining performance, Keeping Today Running offers a practical approach to providing the capacity, sequencing, authority, and operational protection that delivery requires.