major change efforts have helped some organizations adapt significantly to shifting conditions, have improved the competitive standing of others, and have positioned a few for a far better future. But in too many situations the improvements have been disappointing and the carnage has been appalling, with wasted resources and burned-out, scared, or frustrated employees. (Location 90)
Error 1: Allowing Too Much Complacency By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change organizations is to plunge ahead without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees. This error is fatal because transformations always fail to achieve their objectives when complacency levels are high. (Location 95)
Smart individuals like Adrien fail to create sufficient urgency at the beginning of a business transformation for many different but interrelated reasons. They overestimate how much they can force big changes on an organization. They underestimate how hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones. They don’t recognize how their own actions can inadvertently reinforce the status quo. They lack patience: (Location 109)
They become paralyzed by the downside possibilities associated with reducing complacency: people becoming defensive, morale and short-term results slipping. Or, even worse, they confuse urgency with anxiety, and by driving up the latter they push people even deeper into their foxholes and create even more resistance to change. (Location 112)
Too much past success, a lack of visible crises, low performance standards, insufficient feedback from external constituencies, and more all add up to: “Yes, we have our problems, but they aren’t that terrible and I’m doing my job just fine,” or “Sure we have big problems, and they are all over there.” Without a sense of urgency, people won’t give that extra effort that is often essential. (Location 115)
Error 2: Failing to Create a Sufficiently Powerful Guiding Coalition (Location 121)
Major change is often said to be impossible unless the head of the organization is an active supporter. (Location 121)
In successful transformations, the president, division general manager, or department head plus another five, fifteen, or fifty people with a commitment to improved performance pull together as a team. This group rarely includes all of the most senior people because some of them just won’t buy in, at least at first. But in the most successful cases, the coalition is always powerful— in terms of formal titles, information and expertise, reputations and relationships, and the capacity for leadership. Individuals alone, no matter how competent or charismatic, never have all the assets needed to overcome tradition and inertia except in very small organizations. (Location 122)
Efforts that lack a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition can make apparent progress for a while. The organizational structure might be changed, or a reengineering effort might be launched. But sooner or later, countervailing forces undermine the initiatives. (Location 127)
guiding coalitions without strong line leadership never seem to achieve the power that is required to overcome what are often massive sources of inertia. (Location 144)
Error 3: Underestimating the Power of Vision (Location 145)
Urgency and a strong guiding team are necessary but insufficient conditions for major change. Of the remaining elements that are always found in successful transformations, none is more important than a sensible vision. (Location 145)
Without an appropriate vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing, incompatible, and time-consuming projects that go in the wrong direction or nowhere at all. (Location 148)
In many failed transformations, you find plans and programs trying to play the role of vision. (Location 156)
Whenever you cannot describe the vision driving a change initiative in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are in for trouble. (Location 165)
Error 4: Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of 10 (Location 167)
Major change is usually impossible unless most employees are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices. But people will not make sacrifices, even if they are unhappy with the status quo, unless they think the potential benefits of change are attractive and unless they really believe that a transformation is possible. (Location 168)
Without credible communication, and a lot of it, employees’ hearts and minds are never captured. (Location 170)
a group actually develops a pretty good transformation vision and then proceeds to sell it by holding only a few meetings or sending out only a few memos. Its members, thus having used only the smallest fraction of the yearly intracompany communication, react with astonishment when people don’t seem to understand the new approach. (Location 172)
the head of the organization spends a considerable amount of time making speeches to employee groups, but most of her managers are virtually silent. Here vision captures more of the total yearly communication than in the first case, but the volume is still woefully inadequate. (Location 174)
much more effort goes into newsletters and speeches, but some highly visible individuals still behave in ways that are antithetical to the vision, and the net result is that cynicism among the troops goes up while belief in the new message goes down. (Location 176)
Communication comes in both words and deeds. The latter is generally the most powerful form. Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with the verbal communication. And yet this happens all the time, even in some well-regarded companies. (Location 181)
Error 5: Permitting Obstacles to Block the New Vision (Location 184)
The implementation of any kind of major change requires action from a large number of people. New initiatives fail far too often when employees, even though they embrace a new vision, feel disempowered by huge obstacles in their paths. (Location 184)
Whenever smart and well-intentioned people avoid confronting obstacles, they disempower employees and undermine change. (Location 199)
Error 6: Failing to Create Short-Term Wins (Location 200)
Real transformation takes time. Complex efforts to change strategies or restructure businesses risk losing momentum if there are no short-term goals to meet and celebrate. Most people won’t go on the long march unless they see compelling evidence within six to eighteen months that the journey is producing expected results. Without short-term wins, too many employees give up or actively join the resistance. (Location 201)
Creating short-term wins is different from hoping for short-term wins. The latter is passive, the former active. In a successful transformation, managers actively look for ways to obtain clear performance improvements, establish goals in the yearly planning system, achieve these objectives, and reward the people involved (Location 204)
People often complain about being forced to produce short-term wins, but under the right circumstances that kind of pressure can be a useful element in a change process. When it becomes clear that quality programs or cultural change efforts will take a long time, urgency levels usually drop. Commitments to produce short-term wins can help keep complacency down and encourage the detailed analytical thinking that can usefully clarify or revise transformational visions. (Location 214)
Error 7: Declaring Victory Too Soon (Location 220)
After a few years of hard work, people can be tempted to declare victory in a major change effort with the first major performance improvement. While celebrating a win is fine, any suggestion that the job is mostly done is generally a terrible mistake. Until changes sink down deeply into the culture, which for an entire company can take three to ten years, new approaches are fragile and subject to regression. (Location 220)
it is enormously frustrating to work for a few years, accomplish something, and then have the effort cut off prematurely. Yet it happens far too often. The time frame in many corporations is too short to finish this kind of work and make it stick.” (Location 228)
combination of idealistic change initiators and self-serving change resisters often creates this problem. In their enthusiasm over a clear sign of progress, the initiators go overboard. They are then joined by resisters, who are quick to spot an opportunity to undermine the effort. After the celebration, the resisters point to the victory as a sign that the war is over and the troops should be sent home. Weary troops let themselves be convinced that they won. Once home, foot soldiers are reluctant to return to the front. Soon thereafter, change comes to a halt and irrelevant traditions creep back in. (Location 233)
Declaring victory too soon is like stumbling into a sinkhole on the road to meaningful change. And for a variety of reasons, even smart people don’t just stumble into that hole. Sometimes they jump in with both feet. (Location 238)
Error 8: Neglecting to Anchor Changes Firmly in the Corporate Culture (Location 239)
change sticks only when it becomes “the way we do things around here,” when it seeps into the very bloodstream of the work unit or corporate body. Until new behaviors are rooted in social norms and shared values, they are always subject to degradation as soon as the pressures associated with a change effort are removed. (Location 240)
The first is a conscious attempt to show people how specific behaviors and attitudes have helped improve performance. When people are left on their own to make the connections, as is often the case, they can easily create inaccurate links. (Location 243)
Anchoring change also requires that sufficient time be taken to ensure that the next generation of management really does personify the new approach. If promotion criteria are not reshaped, another common error, transformations rarely last. One bad succession decision at the top of an organization can undermine a decade of hard work. (Location 248)
Smart people miss the mark here when they are insensitive to cultural issues. Economically oriented finance people and analytically oriented engineers can find the topic of social norms and values too soft for their tastes. So they ignore culture— at their peril. (Location 256)
Handling new initiatives quickly is not an essential component of success in relatively stable or cartel-like environments. The problem for us today is that stability is no longer the norm. And most experts agree that over the next few decades the business environment will become only more volatile. (Location 259)
These (Location 268)
These errors are not inevitable. With awareness and skill, they can be avoided or at least greatly mitigated. The key lies in understanding why organizations resist needed change, what exactly is the multistage process that can overcome destructive inertia, and, most of all, how the leadership that is required to drive that process in a socially healthy way means more than good management. (Location 269)
most public and private organizations can be significantly improved, at an acceptable cost, but that we often make terrible mistakes when we try because history has simply not prepared us for transformational challenges. (Location 278)
FIGURE 2-1 Economic and social forces driving the need for major change in organizations (Location 298)
useful change tends to be associated with a multistep process that creates power and motivation sufficient to overwhelm all the sources of inertia. Second, this process is never employed effectively unless it is driven by high-quality leadership, not just excellent management— an important distinction that will come up repeatedly as we talk about instituting significant organizational change. (Location 303)
needed change can still stall because of inwardly focused cultures, paralyzing bureaucracy, parochial politics, a low level of trust, lack of teamwork, arrogant attitudes, a lack of leadership in middle management, and the general human fear of the unknown. To be effective, a method designed to alter strategies, reengineer processes, or improve quality must address these barriers and address them well. (Location 308)
The steps are: establishing a sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering a broad base of people to take action, generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the culture. (Location 314)
Source: (Location 318)
people skip steps because they are feeling pressures to produce. They also invent new sequences because some seemingly reasonable logic dictates such a choice. After getting well into the urgency phase (# 1), all change efforts end up operating in multiple stages at once, but initiating action in any order other than that shown in figure 2– 2 rarely works well. It doesn’t build and develop in a natural way. It comes across as contrived, forced, or mechanistic. It doesn’t create the momentum needed to overcome enormously powerful sources of inertia. (Location 358)
Most major change initiatives are made up of a number of smaller projects that also tend to go through the multistep process. So at any one time, you might be halfway through the overall effort, finished with a few of the smaller pieces, and just beginning other projects. The net effect is like wheels within wheels. (Location 363)
When an organization is in a crisis, the first change project within a larger change process is often the save-the-ship or turnaround effort. For six to twenty-four months, people take decisive actions to stop negative cash flow and keep the organization alive. The second change project might be associated with a new strategy or reengineering. That could be followed by major structural and cultural change. Each of these efforts goes through all eight steps in the change sequence, and each plays a role in the overall transformation. (Location 370)
multiple projects, the end result is often complex, dynamic, messy, and scary. At the beginning, those who attempt to create major change with simple, linear, analytical processes almost always fail. The point is not that analysis is unhelpful. Careful thinking is always essential, but there is a lot more involved here than (a) gathering data, (b) identifying options, (c) analyzing, and (d) choosing. (Location 374)
Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving. (Location 380)
Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles (Location 382)
successful transformation is 70 to 90 percent leadership and only 10 to 30 percent management. Yet for historical reasons, many organizations today don’t have much leadership. And almost everyone thinks about the problem here as one of managing change. (Location 385)
Source: (Location 393)
Success creates some degree of market dominance, which in turn produces much growth. After a while, keeping the ever-larger organization under control becomes the primary challenge. So attention turns inward, and managerial competencies are nurtured. With a strong emphasis on management but not leadership, bureaucracy and an inward focus take over. But with continued success, the result mostly of market dominance, the problem often goes unaddressed and an unhealthy arrogance begins to evolve. All of these characteristics then make any transformation effort much more difficult. (Location 398)
The combination of cultures that resist change and managers who have not been taught how to create change is lethal. (Location 406)
Sources of complacency are rarely attacked adequately because urgency is not an issue for people who have been asked all their lives merely to maintain the current system like a softly humming Swiss watch. (Location 407)
A powerful enough guiding coalition with sufficient leadership is not created by people who have been taught to think in terms of hierarchy and management. Visions and strategies are not formulated by individuals who have learned only to deal with plans and budgets. Sufficient time and energy are never invested in communicating a new sense of direction to enough people— not surprising in light of a history of simply handing direct reports the latest plan. (Location 409)
Source: (Location 419)
Transformation requires sacrifice, dedication, and creativity, none of which usually comes with coercion. (Location 426)
Efforts to effect change that are overmanaged and underled also tend to try to eliminate the inherent messiness of transformations. Eight stages are reduced to three. Seven projects are consolidated into two. Instead of involving hundreds or thousands of people, the initiative is handled mostly by a small group. The net result is almost always very disappointing. (Location 427)
Without competent management, the transformation process can get out of control. But for most organizations, the much bigger challenge is leading change. Only leadership can blast through the many sources of corporate inertia. Only leadership can motivate the actions needed to alter behavior in any significant way. Only leadership can get change to stick by anchoring it in the very culture of an organization. (Location 430)
The solution to the change problem is not one larger-than-life individual who charms thousands into being obedient followers. Modern organizations are far too complex to be transformed by a single giant. Many people need to help with the leadership task, not by attempting to imitate the likes of Winston Churchill or Martin Luther King, Jr., but by modestly assisting with the leadership agenda in their spheres of activity. (Location 434)
Establishing a Sense of Urgency (Location 455)
Establishing a sense of urgency is crucial to gaining needed cooperation. With complacency high, transformations usually go nowhere because few people are even interested in working on the change problem. With urgency low, it’s difficult to put together a group with enough power and credibility to guide the effort or to convince key individuals to spend the time necessary to create and communicate a change vision. (Location 462)
But sooner or later, no matter how hard they push, no matter how much they threaten, if many others don’t feel the same sense of urgency, the momentum for change will probably die far short of the finish line. (Location 467)
no highly visible crisis existed. The firm was not losing money. No one had threatened a big layoff. Bankruptcy was not an issue. Raiders were not knocking at the door. The press was not serving up constantly negative headlines about the firm. As a rational analyst, you could argue that the company was in a crisis because of steadily declining market shares and margins, but that’s a different issue. (Location 516)
Second, (Location 521)
meeting was taking place in a room that screamed “Success.” (Location 522)
the standards against which these managers measured themselves were far from high. (Location 525)
the organizational structure focused most people’s attention on narrow functional goals instead of broad business (Location 528)
Marketing had its indexes, manufacturing had a different set, personnel yet another. Only the CEO was responsible for overall sales, net income, and return on equity. So when the most basic measures of corporate performance were going down, virtually no one felt responsible. (Location 529)
the various internal planning and control systems were rigged to make it easy for everyone to meet their functional goals. (Location 531)
whatever performance feedback people received came almost entirely from these faulty internal systems. Data from external stakeholders rarely went to anyone. The average manager or employee could work for a month and never be confronted with an unsatisfied customer, an angry stockholder, or a frustrated supplier. Some people could probably work from day one until retirement and never hear directly from an unhappy external stakeholder. (Location 534)
complacency was supported by the very human tendency to deny that which we do not want to hear. (Location 540)
those who were relatively unaffected by complacency sources 1– 8 and thus concerned about the firm’s future were often lulled back into a false sense of security by senior management’s “happy talk.” “Sure, we have challenges, but look at all that we’ve accomplished.” (Location 543)
Although happy talk is sometimes insincere, it is often the product of an arrogant culture that, in turn, is the result of past success. (Location 546)
Past success provides too many resources, reduces our sense of urgency, and encourages us to turn inward. For individuals, it creates an ego problem; for firms, a cultural problem. Big egos and arrogant cultures reinforce the nine sources of complacency, which, taken together, can keep the urgency rate low even in an organization faced with major challenges and managed by perfectly intelligent and reasonable people. (Location 548)
Never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help maintain the status quo. (Location 554)
When confronted with an organization that needs renewal, all competent managers take some of these actions. (Location 559)
Creating a strong sense of urgency usually demands bold or even risky actions that we normally associate with good leadership. (Location 564)
Bold means cleaning up the balance sheet and creating a huge loss for the quarter. Or selling corporate headquarters and moving into a building that looks more like a battle command center. Or telling all your businesses that they have twenty-four months to become first or second in their markets, with the penalty for failure being divestiture or closure. Or making 50 percent of the pay for the top ten officers based on tough product-quality targets for the whole organization. Or hiring consultants to gather and then force discussion of honest information at meetings, even though you know that such a strategy will upset some people greatly. (Location 566)
We don’t see these kinds of bold moves more often because people living in overmanaged and underled cultures are generally taught that such actions are not sensible. (Location 571)
Ways to raise the urgency level 1. Create a crisis by allowing a financial loss, exposing managers to major weaknesses vis-à-vis competitors, or allowing errors to blow up instead of being corrected at the last minute. 2. Eliminate obvious examples of excess (e.g., company-owned country club facilities, a large air force, gourmet executive dining rooms). 3. Set revenue, income, productivity, customer satisfaction, and cycle-time targets so high that they can’t be reached by conducting business as usual. 4. Stop measuring subunit performance based only on narrow functional goals. Insist that more people be held accountable for broader measures of business performance. 5. Send more data about customer satisfaction and financial performance to more employees, especially information that demonstrates weaknesses vis-à-vis the competition. 6. Insist that people talk regularly to unsatisfied customers, unhappy suppliers, and disgruntled shareholders. 7. Use consultants and other means to force more relevant data and honest discussion into management meetings. 8. Put more honest discussions of the firm’s problems in company newspapers and senior management speeches. Stop senior management “happy talk.” 9. Bombard people with information on future opportunities, on the wonderful rewards for capitalizing on those opportunities, and on the organization’s current inability to pursue those opportunities. (Location 576)
Bold moves that reduce complacency tend to increase conflict and to create anxiety, at least at first. Real leaders take action because they have confidence that the forces unleashed can be directed to achieve important ends. But for someone who has been rewarded for thirty or forty years for being a cautious manager, initiatives to increase urgency levels often look too risky or just plain foolish. (Location 589)
If top management consists only of cautious managers, no one will push the urgency rate sufficiently high and a major transformation will never succeed. In such cases, boards of directors have a responsibility to find leaders and to place them in key jobs. (Location 592)
Visible crises can be enormously helpful in catching people’s attention and pushing up urgency levels. Conducting business as usual is very difficult if the building seems to be on fire. But in an increasingly fast-moving world, waiting for a fire to break out is a dubious strategy. And in addition to catching people’s attention, a sudden fire can cause a lot of damage. (Location 595)
Because economic crises are so visible, major change is often said to be impossible until an organization’s problems become severe enough to generate significant losses. While this conclusion may be true in cases where a huge and difficult transformation is needed, I think it applies poorly to most situations that need change. (Location 598)
have seen people successfully initiate restructurings or quality efforts during times when their firms were making record profits. They did so by relentlessly bombarding employees with information about problems (profits up but market share down), potential problems (a new competitor is showing signs of becoming more aggressive), or potential opportunities (through technology or new markets). They did so by setting vastly ambitious goals that disrupted the status quo. They did so by aggressively removing signs of excess, happy talk, misleading information systems, and more. Catching people’s attention during good times is far from easy, but it is possible. (Location 601)
five-year goals became little bombs that periodically blew up pockets of complacency. Real leaders often create these sorts of artificial crises rather than waiting for something to happen. (Location 610)
Some artificial crises rely on large financial losses to wake people up. (Location 615)
The problem with major financial crises, whether natural or rigged, is that they often drain scarce resources from the firm and thus leave less maneuvering room. After losing a billion or two, you can usually get people’s attention, but you end up with far fewer funds to support new initiatives. (Location 618)
Even though transformations start more easily with a natural financial crisis, given a choice, it’s clearly smarter not to wait for one to happen. Better to create the problem yourself. Better still, if at all possible, help people see the opportunities or the crisislike nature of the situation without inducing crippling losses. (Location 620)
If the target of change is a plant, sales office, or work unit at the bottom of a larger organization, the key players will be those middle or lower-level managers who are in charge of that unit. (Location 623)
Without sufficient autonomy in a firm where complacency is rife (not an unusual situation today), a change effort in a small unit can be doomed from the start. Sooner or later the broader forces of inertia will intervene no matter what the lower-level change agents do. Under these circumstances, plunging ahead with a transformation effort can be a terrible mistake. When people realize this fact, they often think they have only one alternative: Sit back and wait for someone at the top to start providing strong leadership. So they do nothing, and in the process strengthen the very forces of inertia that so infuriate them. (Location 627)
Because they have the power, senior executives are usually the key players in reducing the forces of inertia. But not always. Occasionally a brave and competent soul at the middle or lower level in the hierarchy is instrumental in creating the conditions that can support a transformation. (Location 631)
If everyone in senior management is a cautious manager committed to the status quo, a brave revolutionary down below will always fail. But I have never seen an organization in which the entire top management is against change. Even in the worst cases, 20 to 30 percent seem to know that the enterprise isn’t living up to its potential, want to do something, but feel blocked. Middle-management initiatives can give these people the opportunity to attack complacency without being seen as poor team players or rabble rousers. (Location 641)
For those in middle management who cannot find a way to help push up the urgency level in a firm that needs change but in which senior management is not providing the necessary leadership, a smart career decision may be to move elsewhere. (Location 645)
One of the many problems in complacent organizations is that rigidity and conservatism make learning difficult. (Location 649)
Punching a time clock, collecting a check, learning little, and allowing the urgency rate to remain low is at best a parochial and short-term strategy. Parochial and short-term strategies rarely lead to long-term success anymore, for either companies or their employees. (Location 650)
Even when people do begin major change efforts with complacency-reduction exercises, they sometimes convince themselves that the job is done when in fact more work is necessary. I have seen exceptionally capable individuals fall into this trap. (Location 661)
Outsiders can be helpful here. Ask well-informed customers, suppliers, or stockholders what they think. Is the urgency rate high enough? Is complacency low enough? Don’t just talk to fellow employees who have the same incentives as you to discount reality. And don’t ask these questions only of a few friends on the outside. Talk to others who know your firm or even to people who seem to be at odds with your organization. And, most important, muster up the courage to listen carefully. (Location 665)
Creating the Guiding Coalition (Location 672)
Because major change is so difficult to accomplish, a powerful force is required to sustain the process. No one individual, even a monarch-like CEO, is ever able to develop the right vision, communicate it to large numbers of people, eliminate all the key obstacles, generate short-term wins, lead and manage dozens of change projects, and anchor new approaches deep in the organization’s culture. (Location 677)
A strong guiding coalition is always needed— one with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective. Building such a team is always an essential part of the early stages of any effort to restructure, reengineer, or retool a set of (Location 680)
With the industry in flux and the need for major change inside the firm, the issues suddenly came faster and bigger. One person, even an exceptionally capable individual, could no longer handle this decision stream well. Choices were made and communicated too slowly. Choices were made without a full understanding of the issues. Employees were asked to make sacrifices without a clear sense of why they should do so. (Location 698)
and because some are not convinced this is the best use of their time, scheduling enough meetings to create a shared diagnosis of the firm’s problems and to build trust among the group’s members becomes impossible. Nevertheless, the leader of the committee refuses to give up and struggles to make visible progress, often because of an enormous sense of dedication to the firm or its employees. (Location 710)
After a while, the work is done by a subgroup of three or four— mostly the chair, a consultant, and a Young Turk. The rest of the members rubber-stamp the ideas this small group produces, but they neither contribute much nor feel any commitment to the process. Sooner or later the problem becomes visible: when the group can’t get a consensus on key recommendations, when its committee recommendations fall on deaf ears, or when it tries to implement an idea and runs into a wall of passive resistance. With much hard work, the committee does make a few contributions, but they come only slowly and incrementally. (Location 713)
The central issue in both of these scenarios is that neither firm is taking into account the speed of market and technological change. In a less competitive and slower-moving world, weak committees can help organizations adapt at an acceptable rate. A committee makes recommendations. Key line managers reject most of the ideas. The group offers additional suggestions. The line moves another inch. The committee tries again. When both competition and technological change are limited, this approach can work. But in a faster-moving world, the weak committee always fails. (Location 722)
So (Location 738)
Teams aren’t promoted, individuals are, and individuals need unambiguous track records to advance their careers. The argument “I was on a team that…” doesn’t sell well in most places today. (Location 740)
Most senior-level executives were raised managerially in an era when teamwork was not essential. They may have talked “team” and used sports metaphors, but the reality was hierarchical— typically, a boss and his eight direct reports. Having seen many examples of poorly functioning committees, where everything moves slower instead of faster, they are often much more comfortable in sticking with the old format, even if it is working less and less well over time. (Location 742)
Four key characteristics seem to be essential to effective guiding coalitions. They are: 1. POSITION POWER: Are enough key players on board, especially the main line managers, so that those left out cannot easily block progress? 2. EXPERTISE: Are the various points of view— in terms of discipline, work experience, nationality, etc.— relevant to the task at hand adequately represented so that informed, intelligent decisions will be made? 3. CREDIBILITY: Does the group have enough people with good reputations in the firm so that its pronouncements will be taken seriously by other employees? 4. LEADERSHIP: Does the group include enough proven leaders to be able to drive the change process? (Location 749)
You need both management and leadership skills on the guiding coalition, and they must work in tandem, teamwork style. The former keeps the whole process under control, while the latter drives the change. (Location 757)
A guiding coalition with good managers but poor leaders will not succeed. A managerial mindset will develop plans, not vision; it will vastly undercommunicate the need for and direction of change; and it will control rather than empower people. Yet companies with much historical success are often left with corporate cultures that create just that mindset that rejects both leaders and leadership. (Location 762)
Ironically, great success creates a momentum that demands more and more managers to keep the growing enterprise under control while requiring little if any leadership. (Location 765)
Missing leadership is generally addressed in three ways: (1) people are brought in from outside the firm, (2) employees who know how to lead are promoted from within, or (3) employees who hold positions requiring leadership, but who rarely lead, are encouraged to accept the challenge. (Location 767)
A guiding coalition made up only of managers— even superb managers who are wonderful people— will cause major change efforts to fail. (Location 769)
Two types of individuals should be avoided at all costs when putting together a guiding coalition. The first have egos that fill up a room, leaving no space for anybody else. The second are what I call snakes, people who create enough mistrust to kill teamwork. (Location 774)
Snakes and big egos can be extremely intelligent, motivated, and productive in certain ways. As such, they can get promoted to senior management positions and be logical candidates for a guiding coalition. Smart change agents seem to be skilled at spotting these people and keeping them off the team. If that’s impossible, capable leaders watch and manage these folks very carefully. (Location 781)
snake or big ego, a negotiated resignation or retirement is often the only sensible option. You don’t want them on the guiding coalition, but you also can’t afford to have them outside the meeting room causing problems. Organizations are often reluctant to confront this issue, usually because these people have either special skills or political support. But the alternative is usually worse— having them undermine a new strategy or a cultural renewal effort. (Location 795)
Afraid to confront the problem, we convince ourselves that Jerry isn’t so bad or that we can maneuver around him. So we move on, only to curse ourselves later for not dealing with the issue. (Location 799)
Personnel problems that can be ignored during easy times can cause serious trouble in a tougher, faster-moving, globalizing economy. (Location 801)
Teamwork on a guiding change coalition can be created in many different ways. But regardless of the process used, one component is necessary: trust. When trust is present, you will usually be able to create teamwork. When it is missing, you won’t. (Location 802)
Trust is absent in many organizations. People who have spent their careers in a single department or division are often taught loyalty to their immediate group and distrust of the motives of others, even if they are in the same firm. Lack of communication and many other factors heighten misplaced rivalry. (Location 804)
To accommodate this reality, by far the most common vehicle used now is some form of carefully planned off-site set of meetings. A group of eight or twelve or twenty-four go somewhere for two to five days with the explicit objective of becoming more of a team. They talk, analyze, climb mountains, and play games, all for the purpose of increasing mutual understanding and trust. (Location 819)
A typical off-site retreat involves ten to fifty people for three to six days. Internal staff or external consultants help plan the meeting. Much of the time is spent encouraging honest discussions about how individuals think and feel with regard to the organization, its problems and opportunities. Communication channels between people are opened or strengthened. Mutual understanding is enlarged. Intellectual and social activities are designed to encourage the growth of trust. Such team-building outings much too often still fail to achieve results. Expectations are sometimes set too high for a single three-day event, or the meeting is not planned with enough care or expertise. But the trend is clear. We are getting better at this sort of activity. (Location 825)
When people fail to develop the coalition needed to guide change, the most common reason is that down deep they really don’t think a transformation is necessary or they don’t think a strong team is needed to direct the change. (Location 852)
When executives truly believe they must create a team-oriented guiding coalition, they always seem to find competent advisors who have the skills. Without that belief, even if they have the ability or good counsel, they don’t take needed actions. (Location 854)
Only when all the members of a guiding coalition deeply want to achieve the same objective does real teamwork become feasible. (Location 856)
When trust is raised, creating a common goal becomes much easier. Leadership also helps. Leaders know how to encourage people to transcend short-term parochial interests. (Location 863)
Building a coalition that can make change happen Find the right people• With strong position power, broad expertise, and high credibility• With leadership and management skills, especially the former Create trust• Through carefully planned off-site events• With lots of talk and joint activities Develop a common goal• Sensible to the head• Appealing to the heart (Location 866)
The resulting guiding coalition will have the capacity to make needed change happen despite all the forces of inertia. It will have the potential, at least, to do the hard work involved in creating the necessary vision, communicating the vision widely, empowering a broad base of people to take action, ensuring credibility, building short-term wins, leading and managing dozens of different change projects, and anchoring the new approaches in the organization’s culture. (Location 873)
many people try to transform organizations using methods that look like the first two scenarios: authoritarian decree and micromanagement. (Location 887)
When the goal is behavior change, unless the boss is extremely powerful, authoritarian decree often works poorly even in simple situations, like the apple tree case. Increasingly, in complex organizations, this approach doesn’t work at all. Without the power of kings and queens behind it, authoritarianism is unlikely to break through all the forces of resistance. People will ignore you or pretend to cooperate while doing everything possible to undermine your efforts. (Location 889)
Micromanagement tries to get around this problem by specifying what employees should do in detail and then monitoring compliance. This tactic can break through some of the barriers to change, but in an increasingly unacceptable amount of time. Because the creation and communication of detailed plans is deadly slow, the change produced this way tends to be highly incremental. (Location 892)
Vision refers to a picture of the future with some implicit or explicit commentary on why people should strive to create that future. (Location 900)
In a change process, a good vision serves three important purposes. First, by clarifying the general direction for change, by saying the corporate equivalent of “we need to be south of here in a few years instead of where we are today,” it simplifies hundreds or thousands of more detailed decisions. Second, it motivates people to take action in the right direction, even if the initial steps are personally painful. Third, it helps coordinate the actions of different people, even thousands and thousands of individuals, in a remarkably fast and efficient way. (Location 901)
Clarifying the direction of change is important because, more often than not, people disagree on direction, or are confused, or wonder whether significant change is really necessary. (Location 905)
An effective vision and back-up strategies help resolve these issues. They say: This is how our world is changing, and here are compelling reasons why we should set these goals and pursue these new products (or acquisitions or quality programs) to accomplish the goals. With clarity of direction, the inability to make decisions can disappear. (Location 906)
One simple question— is this in line with the vision?— can help eliminate hours, days, or even months of torturous discussion. (Location 910)
a good vision can help clear the decks of expensive and time-consuming clutter. With clarity of direction, inappropriate projects can be identified and terminated, even if they have political support. The resources thus freed can be put toward the transformation process. (Location 911)
in many organizations, employees are increasingly forced out of their comfort zones, made to work with fewer resources, asked to learn new skills and behaviors, and threatened with the possibility of job loss. Under these circumstances, no one should be surprised that a rational human being might view all this without much enthusiasm. (Location 916)
A good vision helps to overcome this natural reluctance to do what is (often painfully) necessary by being hopeful and therefore motivating. A good vision acknowledges that sacrifices will be necessary but makes clear that these sacrifices will yield particular benefits and personal satisfactions that are far superior to those available today— or tomorrow— without attempting to change. (Location 918)
Even in situations that require significant downsizing, where the natural inclination is to want to deny the future because it is depressing and demoralizing, the right vision can give people an appealing cause for which to fight. (Location 921)
vision helps align individuals, thus coordinating the actions of motivated people in a remarkably efficient way. The alternatives— a zillion detailed directives or endless meetings— are much slower and costlier. With clarity of vision, managers and employees can figure out for themselves what to do without constantly checking with a boss or their peers. (Location 925)
The coordination costs of change, especially when many people are involved, can be gargantuan. Without a shared sense of direction, interdependent people can end up in constant conflict and nonstop meetings. With a shared vision, they can work with some degree of autonomy and yet not trip over each other. (Location 928)
The word vision connotates something grand or mystical, but the direction that guides successful transformations is often simple and mundane, as in: “It’s going to pour, let’s go under that apple tree for shelter and eat some of the fruit for lunch.” (Location 931)
Without vision, strategy making can be a much more contentious activity and budgeting can dissolve into a mindless exercise of taking last year’s numbers and changing them 5 percent one way or the other. Even more so, without a good vision, a clever strategy or a logical plan can rarely inspire the kind of action needed to produce major change. (Location 935)
TABLE (Location 939)
Characteristics of an effective vision• Imaginable: Conveys a picture of what the future will look like• Desirable: Appeals to the long-term interests of employees, customers, stockholders, and others who have a stake in the enterprise• Feasible: Comprises realistic, attainable goals• Focused: Is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making• Flexible: Is general enough to allow individual initiative and alternative responses in light of changing conditions• Communicable: Is easy to communicate; can be successfully explained within five minutes (Location 941)
An Imaginable Picture of the Future (Location 955)
change programs never work well over the long run unless they are guided by visions that appeal to most of the people who have a stake in the enterprise: employees, customers, stockholders, suppliers, communities. (Location 960)
A good vision can demand sacrifices from some or all of these groups in order to produce a better future, but it never ignores the legitimate long-term interests of anyone. (Location 962)
Why would an intelligent group of people pursue a vision that ignores the needs of customers, employees, or investors? From what I’ve observed, this normally happens when management is feeling pressure from one constituency at the same time that it has a quasi-monopoly position over another constituency. (Location 970)
If the vision is made real, how will it affect customers? For those who are satisfied today, will this keep them satisfied? For those who are not entirely happy today, will this make them happier? For people who don’t buy from us now, will this attract them? In a few years, will we be doing a better job than the competition of offering increasingly superior products and services that serve real customer needs? (Location 977)
How will this vision affect stockholders? Will it keep them satisfied? If they are not entirely happy today, will this improve matters? If we are successful in implementing this change, are we likely to provide better financial returns than if we do otherwise? (Location 981)
How will this vision affect employees? If they are satisfied today, will this keep them happy? If they are disgruntled, will this help capture their hearts and minds? If we are successful, will we be able to offer better employment opportunities than those firms with whom we compete in labor markets? (Location 983)
A vision that balances interests perfectly by promising to provide merely average benefits to customers, employees, and stockholders will not generate the support that is needed to accomplish major change. In competitive customer, financial, and labor markets, more is required. Everyone needs to be served well. (Location 986)
Great leaders know how to make ambitious goals look doable— (Location 1000)
Feasibility also means that a vision is grounded in a clear and rational understanding of the organization, its market environment, and competitive trends. This is where strategy plays an important role. Strategy provides both a logic and a first level of detail to show how a vision can be accomplished. (Location 1001)
Strategy consultants gather all kinds of data, especially about markets and competition, and assist firms in making fundamental choices about what products to manufacture and how best to produce those offerings. The huge growth in this kind of consulting business says something significant about the difficulty organizations have in abandoning historical biases, developing new strategies, and assessing their feasibility. (Location 1007)
Focus, Flexibility, and Ease of Communication (Location 1010)
Effective visions are always focused enough to guide employees— to convey which actions are important and which are out of bounds. Statements of direction so vague that people can’t relate to them are not (Location 1010)
Effective visions are open ended enough to allow for individual initiative and for changing conditions. Long and detailed pronouncements not only can feel like straitjackets but can soon become obsolete in a rapidly changing world. At the same time, visions that need constant readjustments lose their credibility. (Location 1015)
communicating even a simple vision to a large number of people can be enormously difficult. Simplicity is essential. (Location 1020)
it’s easier to describe visions that don’t help produce needed change than those that (Location 1022)
It is our goal to become the world leader in our industry within ten years. As we use this term, leadership means more revenue, more profit, more innovation that serves our customers’ needs, and a more attractive place to work than any other competitor. Achieving this ambitious objective will probably require double-digit revenue and profit growth each year. It will surely require that we become less U.S. oriented, more externally focused, considerably less bureaucratic, and more of a service instead of a product company. We sincerely believe that if we work together we can achieve this change, and in the process create a firm that will be admired by our stockholders, customers, employees, and communities. (Location 1031)
An expanded version of this short statement fills three pages and more directly addresses the feasibility issue with a discussion of strategy. (Location 1042)
If you cannot describe your vision to someone in five minutes and get their interest, you have more work to do in this phase of a transformation process. (Location 1044)
the most effective transformational visions I’ve seen in the past few years all seem to share the following characteristics: 1. They are ambitious enough to force people out of comfortable routines. Becoming 5 percent better is not the goal; becoming the best at something is often the goal. 2. They aim in a general way at providing better and better products or services at lower and lower costs, thus appealing greatly to customers and stockholders. 3. They take advantage of fundamental trends, especially globalization and new technology. 4. They make no attempt to exploit anyone and thus have a certain moral power. (Location 1051)
Creating the Vision (Location 1058)
developing a good vision is an exercise of both the head and the heart, it takes some time, it always involves a group of people, and it is tough to do well. (Location 1059)
Vision creation is almost always a messy, difficult, and sometimes emotionally charged exercise. (Location 1064)
Instead of backing down when the conflicts emerged, the boss gently but firmly pushed ahead. He used his not inconsiderable interpersonal skills to keep the pressure at a tolerable level. If he had skipped the first two phases of the transformation process, the meeting might have blown up. But having developed a sense of urgency and established a healthy degree of trust and a shared commitment to excellence, the group was able to work its way through a difficult set of topics and tentatively agree on a modified version of the document. (Location 1072)
we have raised a number of generations of very talented people to be managers, not leaders or leader/ managers, and vision is not a component of effective management. The managerial equivalent to vision creation is planning. Ask a good manager what his or her vision is, and you’ll likely hear about the operating plan— for example, to introduce this product in June, to hire X new people by September, to make $ Y after taxes this year. But a plan can never direct, align, and inspire action the way vision can, and it is therefore not sufficient during transformation. In a slower-moving past, we didn’t need to teach people much about this sort of activity, so we didn’t. Again, history is working against us. (Location 1079)
First draft: The process often starts with an initial statement from a single individual, reflecting both his or her dreams and real marketplace needs.• Role of the guiding coalition: The first draft is always modeled over time by the guiding coalition or an even larger group of people.• Importance of teamwork: The group process never works well without a minimum of effective teamwork.• Role of the head and the heart: Both analytical thinking and a lot of dreaming are essential throughout the activity.• Messiness of the process: Vision creation is usually a process of two steps forward and one back, movement to the left and then to the right.• Time frame: Vision is never created in a single meeting. The activity takes months, sometimes years.• End product: The process results in a direction for the future that is desirable, feasible, focused, flexible, and is conveyable in five minutes or less. (Location 1086)
although a good vision has a certain elegant simplicity, the data and the syntheses required to produce it are usually anything but simple. A (Location 1096)
creating a vision is not just a strategy exercise in assessing environmental opportunities and organizational capabilities. The process very much involves getting in touch with ourselves— who we are and what we care about. (Location 1101)
Pressures build to create something, so afar less than ideal product is accepted and you move on. Under these circumstances, the resulting vision is usually a small increment from the status quo or a bolder statement that most people on the guiding coalition don’t really believe. The fact that the vision isn’t quite right, or isn’t ambitious enough, or has limited support eventually undermines the change effort. (Location 1111)
An ineffective vision may be worse than no vision at all. Pursuit of a poorly developed vision can sometimes send people off a cliff. (Location 1117)
once they learn of the problems caused by the premature shutting off of the vision creation process, employees can become deeply cynical about transformation. With deeply cynical people, you rarely achieve successful change. (Location 1119)
But the real power of a vision is unleashed only when most of those involved in an enterprise or activity have a common understanding of its goals and direction. That shared sense of a desirable future can help motivate and coordinate the kinds of actions that create transformations. (Location 1127)
Managers undercommunicate, and often not by a small amount. Or they inadvertently send inconsistent messages. In either case, the net result is the same: a stalled transformation. (Location 1130)
Getting a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand people to understand and accept a particular vision is usually an enormously challenging undertaking. (Location 1148)
communication of vision can be particularly difficult. Managers tend to think in terms of their immediate subordinates and boss, not the broader constituencies that need to buy into a vision. They tend to be most comfortable with routine factual communication, not future-oriented strategizing and dreaming. (Location 1150)
The development of a transformational vision often requires those on the guiding coalition to spend a few hundred hours collecting information, digesting it, considering alternatives, and eventually making choices. (Location 1156)
Accepting a vision of the future can be a challenging intellectual and emotional task. Our minds naturally generate dozens of questions. (Location 1160)
The purely intellectual task, the part that could be done by a strategy consultant, is difficult enough, but that often is a minor part of the overall exercise. The emotional work is even tougher: letting go of the status quo, letting go of other future options, coming to grips with the sacrifices, coming to trust others, etc. Yet after they are done with this most difficult work, those on a guiding coalition often act as if everyone else in the organization should become clear and comfortable with the resulting vision in a fraction of that time. So a gallon of information is dumped into a river of routine communication, where it is quickly diluted, lost, and forgotten (Location 1166)
the culprit is old-fashioned condescension. “I’m management. You’re labor. I don’t expect you to understand anyway.” But more important, we undercommunicate because we can’t figure out a practical alternative: Put all 10,000 employees through the same exercise as the guiding coalition? Not likely. (Location 1171)
Keep It Simple The time and energy required for effective vision communication are directly related to the clarity and simplicity of the message. Focused, jargon-free information can be disseminated to large groups of people at a fraction of the cost of clumsy, complicated communication. (Location 1181)
Key elements in the effective communication of vision• Simplicity: All jargon and technobabble must be eliminated.• Metaphor, analogy, and example: A verbal picture is worth a thousand words.• Multiple forums: Big meetings and small, memos and newspapers, formal and informal interaction— all are effective for spreading the word.• Repetition: Ideas sink in deeply only after they have been heard many times.• Leadership by example: Behavior from important people that is inconsistent with the vision overwhelms other forms of communication.• Explanation of seeming inconsistencies: Unaddressed inconsistencies undermine the credibility of all communication.• Give-and-take: Two-way communication is always more powerful (Location 1185)
It’s much harder to be clear and concise than overcomplicated and wordy. Simple also means no bamboozling. Technobabble is a shield. If the ideas are dumb, others will recognize them as dumb. (Location 1196)
whenever jargon is used, some people will understand and feel included while most of the audience will feel confused and left out. Consequently, all widespread communication in a change effort must be jargon free. (Location 1207)
Use Metaphors, Analogies, Examples (Location 1212)
Use Many Different Forums (Location 1237)
When the same message comes at people from six different directions, it stands a better chance of being heard and remembered, on both intellectual and emotional levels. So channel A helps answer some of the questions people have, channel B addresses others, and so on. (Location 1239)
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat (Location 1247)
The most carefully crafted messages rarely sink deeply into the recipient’s consciousness after only one pronouncement. Our minds are too cluttered, and any communication has to fight hundreds of other ideas for attention. In addition, a single airing won’t address all the questions we have. As a result, effective information transferral almost always relies on repetition. (Location 1247)
Contrast these two scenarios: In case A, the new vision is introduced as part of three speeches at the annual management meeting and is the subject of three articles in the company newspaper, for a grand total of six repeats over a six-month period. In case B, each of the firm’s twenty-five executives pledges to find four opportunities per day to tie conversations back to the big picture. (Location 1250)
All successful cases of major change seem to include tens of thousands of communications that help employees to grapple with difficult intellectual and emotional issues. (Location 1257)
This happens not because the public relations department takes on “vision distribution” as a “project.” This happens because dozens of managers, supervisors, and executives look at all of their daily activities through the lens of the new vision. When people do this, they can easily find many meaningful ways to talk about the direction of change, communications that can always be tailored to the specific person or group with whom they are talking. (Location 1258)
A sentence here, a paragraph there, two minutes in the middle of a meeting, five minutes at the end of a conversation, three quick references in a speech— collectively, these brief mentions can add up to a massive amount of useful communication, which is generally what is needed to win over both hearts and minds. (Location 1267)
Walk the Talk, or Lead by Example (Location 1269)
Often the most powerful way to communicate a new direction is through behavior. (Location 1269)
When they see top management acting out the vision, a whole set of troublesome questions about credibility and game playing tends to evaporate. (Location 1271)
We often call such behavior “leadership by example.” The concept is simple. Words are cheap, but action is not. The cynical among us, in particular, tend not to believe words but will be impressed by action. (Location 1285)
In a similar vein, telling people one thing and then behaving differently is a great way to undermine the communication of a change vision. (Location 1286)
Nothing undermines the communication of a change vision more than behavior on the part of key players that seems inconsistent with the vision. The implications are powerful: (1) Trying to sell a vision before top management can embody it is tough; and (2) even under the best of circumstances, carefully monitoring senior management behavior is a good idea so that you can identify and address inconsistencies between words and deeds. (Location 1292)
Straightforward and honest messages are often laughed at by cynics. If most employees are highly suspicious of management, then such messages won’t help. But for the employee who wants to believe in his or her company, such a communication is usually much appreciated. Credibility and trust increase, which in turn contribute to communicating the change (Location 1315)
In successful transformations, important inconsistencies in the messages employees are getting are almost always addressed explicitly. If mixed signals can’t be eliminated, they are usually explained, simply and honestly. (Location 1323)
Listen and Be Listened To (Location 1325)
Because the communication of vision is often such a difficult activity, it can easily turn into a screeching, one-way broadcast in which useful feedback is ignored and employees are inadvertently made to feel unimportant. In highly successful change efforts, this rarely happens, because communication always becomes a two-way endeavor. (Location 1325)
I’ve seen more than a few cases in which guiding coalitions didn’t get the vision exactly right and some employees figured this out or could have solved the problems had they been well informed. Yet because feedback wasn’t solicited, the errors were never corrected until late in the process. (Location 1327)
most human beings, especially well-educated ones, buy into something only after they have had a chance to wrestle with it. Wrestling means asking questions, challenging, and arguing. This, of course, is precisely what happens when the vision is first created by the guiding coalition. (Location 1335)
If people don’t accept a vision, the next two steps in the transformation process— empowering individuals for broad-based action and creating short-term wins— will fail. Employees will neither take advantage of their empowerment nor (Location 1344)
The downside of two-way communication is that feedback may suggest that we are on the wrong course and that the vision needs to be reformulated. But in the long run, swallowing our pride and reworking the vision is far more productive than heading off in the wrong direction— or in a direction that others won’t follow. (Location 1348)
Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action (Location 1351)
Major internal transformation rarely happens unless many people assist. Yet employees generally won’t help, or can’t help, if they feel relatively powerless. Hence the relevance of empowerment. (Location 1357)
FIGURE 7-1 Barriers to empowerment (Location 1359)
even when urgency is high, a guiding coalition has created an appropriate vision, and the vision has been well communicated, numerous obstacles can still stop employees from creating needed change. The purpose of stage 5 is to empower a broad base of people to take action by removing as many barriers to the implementation of the change vision as possible at this point in the process. (Location 1362)
Even when employees tried to create cross-functional teams that were product/ customer focused, they found the process enormously frustrating. Strong structural silos undermined the teams in dozens of subtle ways, making the timely delivery of new services to customers virtually impossible. When employees complained to their supervisors, they were told that they should try to be better team players. (Location 1378)
When they suggested that perhaps the organizational structure was a problem, they were given a dozen excuses about why changing the structure was not possible, or wouldn’t help, or would take a long time. Disempowered, they gave up trying to implement the new vision. (Location 1381)
As is so often the case with change, resistance didn’t come from everyone. Only a few managers were really dragging their feet. But they were difficult to influence, partly because they had convinced themselves that they were doing the right thing for the company. (Location 1391)
he saw the vision as a pleasant dream with about a one-in-four chance of being realized. So with the losses clear and certain and the potential gains foggy and improbable, he dragged his feet. The net result was that the company retained an organization structure that systematically blocked employee efforts to implement the new vision. (Location 1396)
Structure is not always a big barrier in transformations, at least in the early stages, but I’ve seen many cases in which organizational arrangements undermine a vision by disempowering people (Location 1399)
Whenever structural barriers are not removed in a timely way, the risk is that employees will become so frustrated that they will sour on the entire transformational effort. If that happens, even if you eventually reorganize correctly, you’ve lost the energy needed to use the new structure to make the vision a reality. (Location 1414)
Sometimes we become so accustomed to one basic organizational design, perhaps because it has been used for decades, that we are blind to the alternatives. Sometimes people have so much invested in one structure, in terms of personal loyalties and functional expertise, that they are afraid of the potential career consequences. Sometimes senior managers know a redesign is needed, but they don’t want to get into a fight with middle management or with their peers. But often the basis for change hasn’t been firmly enough established. Middle management easily resists structural change when it doesn’t feel a sense of urgency, doesn’t see a dedicated team at the top, doesn’t see a sensible vision for change, or doesn’t feel that others believe in that vision. (Location 1417)
People are expected to change habits built up over years or decades with only five days of education. People are taught technical skills but not the social skills or attitudes needed to make the new arrangements work. People are given a course before they start their new jobs, but aren’t provided with follow-up to help them with problems they encounter while performing those jobs. (Location 1443)
think there are two common reasons why we fall into this trap. First, we often don’t think through carefully enough what new behavior, skills, and attitudes will be needed when major changes are initiated. As a result, we don’t recognize the kind and amount of training that will be required to help people learn those new behaviors, skills, and attitudes. Second, we sometimes do recognize correctly what is needed, but when we translate that into time and money, we are overwhelmed by the results. How can anyone justify sending 10,000 people to a two-day training course? Or spend $ 3 million on a special educational effort? (Location 1446)
attitude training is often just as important as skills training. (Location 1457)
millions of nonmanagerial employees have been taught by their companies and their unions not to accept much responsibility. For many of these people, you can’t just say, “OK, now you’re empowered, go to it.” Some simply won’t believe you, some will think it’s an exploitative trick, and others will worry that they aren’t capable. New experiences are needed to erase corrosive beliefs, and some of that can be done efficiently with training. (Location 1458)
training can easily become a disempowering experience if the implicit message is “shut up and do it this way” instead of “we will be delegating more, so we are providing this course to help you with your new responsibilities.” The point is: Some training could be required at this stage in a transformation, but it needs to be the right kind of experience. Throwing money at the problem is never a good idea, nor is talking down to people. (Location 1464)
Aligning Systems to the Vision (Location 1468)
The performance evaluation form has virtually nothing about customers on it, yet that is at the core of the new vision.• Compensation decisions are based much more on not making mistakes than on creating useful change.• Promotion decisions are made in a highly subjective way and seem to have at best a limited relationship to the change effort.• Recruiting and hiring systems are a decade old and only marginally support the transformation. (Location 1491)
Further investigation also shows that management information systems haven’t changed much to help the transformation; likewise the strategic planning process, which still focuses much too much on short-term financial information and much too little on market/ competitive analysis. (Location 1496)
During the first half of a major change effort, owing to constraints on time, energy, and/ or money, you can’t alter everything. Barriers associated with the organization’s culture, for example, are extremely difficult to remove completely until the end of each change project, after performance improvements are clear. (Location 1498)
Systems are easier to move, but if you tried to iron out every little inconsistency between the new vision and the current systems, you’d simply fail. Before some solid short-term wins are established, the guiding coalition rarely has the momentum or power to make that much change. (Location 1501)
Nevertheless, when the big, built-in, hard-wired incentives and processes are seriously at odds with the new vision, you must deal with that fact directly. Dodging the issue disempowers employees and risks undermining the change. (Location 1503)
History often leaves HR people in highly bureaucratic personnel functions that discourage leadership and make altering human resource practices a big challenge. Breaking out of this pattern is not easy. Yet in successful transformations, I increasingly see gutsy HR men and women helping provide the leadership needed to change the systems to fit a new vision. (Location 1506)
In some cases they do so despite little encouragement from line managers or even from their HR colleagues. They do so because they care deeply about employees and are appalled by the consequences of poorly handled change efforts. (Location 1509)
Dealing with Troublesome Supervisors (Location 1510)
He has dozens of interrelated habits that add up to a style of management. If he alters just one aspect of his behavior, all the other interrelated elements tend to put great pressure on him to switch that one piece of behavior back to the way it was. What he needs is to change all the habits as a group, but that can feel as hard as trying to quit smoking, drinking, and eating fatty foods all at the same time. (Location 1523)
One major reason why the Franks of the world aren’t confronted is that others are afraid that these people can’t change, yet they are unwilling to demote or fire them. Sometimes the unwillingness to act is driven by guilt, especially if the disempowerers are friends or former mentors. Political considerations also play a big role in these cases. People fear that if a fight erupts, the Franks may be powerful enough to win, perhaps even forcing the change agents out. In many other situations, the reluctance to act is related to the good short-term results delivered by people like Frank. (Location 1534)
the best solution to this kind of problem is usually honest dialogue. Here’s the story with the industry, the company, our vision, the assistance we need from you, and the time frame in which we need all this. What can we do to help you help us? If the situation really is hopeless, and the person needs to be replaced, that fact often becomes clear early in this dialogue. If the person wants to help but feels blocked, the discussion can identify solutions. If the person wants to help but is incapable of doing so, the clearer expectations and timetable can eventually make his or her removal less contentious. The basic fairness of this approach helps overcome guilt. The rational and thoughtful dialogue also helps minimize the risk that good short-term results will suddenly turn bad or that Frank and others like him will be able to launch a successful political counterattack. (Location 1541)
Guilt, political considerations, and concerns over short-term results stop people all the time from having these honest discussions. In retrospect, executives often express regret that they didn’t confront problem managers sooner in the process. (Location 1547)
An unwillingness to confront managers like Frank is common in change efforts. It rarely helps. These blockers stop needed action. Perhaps even more important, others see that these people are not being confronted and they become discouraged. (Location 1550)
Discouraged employees do not produce the short-term wins that are vital to building momentum in a transformation effort. Discouraged employees do not help manage the large number of change projects that typically are needed in a transformation. (Location 1552)
Tapping an Enormous Source of Power (Location 1554)
Communicate a sensible vision to employees: If employees have a shared sense of purpose, it will be easier to initiate actions to achieve that purpose.• Make structures compatible with the vision: Unaligned structures block needed action.• Provide the training employees need: Without the right skills and attitudes, people feel disempowered.• Align information and personnel systems to the vision: Unaligned systems also block needed action.• Confront supervisors who undercut needed change: Nothing disempowers people the way a bad boss can. (Location 1560)
Generating Short-Term Wins (Location 1567)
With the benefit of hindsight, the errors are easy to spot. Only one executive at corporate headquarters was a part of the guiding coalition, and he wasn’t a particularly influential individual. (Location 1585)
the worst mistake was that insufficient attention was given to short-term results. People became so caught up in big dreams that they didn’t effectively manage the current reality. When critics asked for evidence that all this activity was moving the firm in the right direction, despite few if any performance improvements, nothing convincing was offered. When the coalition accused the disgruntled of being a bunch of unvisionary poops, corporate headquarters grew wary. (Location 1587)
By putting almost no emphasis on short-term results, he didn’t build the credibility he needed to sustain his efforts over the long haul. (Location 1594)
Major change takes time, sometimes lots of time. Zealous believers will often stay the course no matter what happens. Most of the rest of us expect to see convincing evidence that all the effort is paying off. Nonbelievers have even higher standards of proof. They want to see clear data indicating that the changes are working and that the change process isn’t absorbing so many resources in the short term as to endanger the organization. (Location 1595)
Running a transformation effort without serious attention to short-term wins is extremely risky (see figure 8– 1). Sometimes you get lucky; visible results just happen. (Location 1598)
company has a huge reengineering effort under way. Aware that the project will take at least four years to complete, those on the guiding coalition ask themselves, How can we target and then produce some unambiguous performance improvements in six to eighteen months? With careful thought, they identify three areas: one department in which costs could drop significantly within a year, a process improvement that should be quickly visible to and liked by customers, and a small reorganization that should improve morale in one group. For each of the three areas, specific goals and plans are built into the company’s two-year operating budget. One person in the coalition is given responsibility for monitoring all three efforts. In executive committee meetings, at least once every sixty days all three miniprojects are reviewed. (Location 1601)
Even with these wins, skeptics were able to find some evidence that the reengineering was too costly, too slow, or simply wrongheaded. But the performance improvements knocked air out of their sails. Creating those wins also provided the guiding coalition with concrete feedback about the validity of their vision. And for those who were working so hard to produce meaningful change, planning for the short-term results provided milestones they could look forward to while achieving the actual wins gave them a chance to pat themselves on the back. (Location 1616)
The kind of results required in stage 6 of a transformation process are both visible and unambiguous. Subtlety won’t help. Close calls don’t either. (Location 1621)
Having a good meeting usually doesn’t qualify as the kind of unambiguous win needed in this phase, nor does getting two people to stop fighting, producing a new design that the engineering manager thinks is terrific, or sending 5,000 copies of a new vision statement around the company. Any of these actions may be important, but none is a good example of a short-term win. (Location 1622)
A good short-term win has at least these three characteristics: 1. It’s visible; large numbers of people can see for themselves whether the result is real or just hype. 2. It’s unambiguous; there can be little argument over the call. 3. It’s clearly related to the change effort. (Location 1625)
In small companies or in small units of enterprises, the first results are often needed in half a year. In big organizations, some unambiguous wins are required by eighteen months. (Location 1632)
The role of short-term wins• Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it: Wins greatly help justify the short-term costs involved.• Reward change agents with a pat on the back: After a lot of hard work, positive feedback builds morale and motivation.• Help fine-tune vision and strategies: Short-term wins give the guiding coalition concrete data on the viability of their ideas.• Undermine cynics and self-serving resisters: Clear improvements in performance make it difficult for people to block needed change.• Keep bosses on board: Provides those higher in the hierarchy with evidence that the transformation is on track.• Build momentum: Turns neutrals into supporters, reluctant supporters into active helpers, etc. (Location 1640)
Transformations sometimes go off track because people simply don’t appreciate the role that quick performance improvements play in a change effort. But more often the effort is undermined because managers don’t systematically plan for the creation of shortterm wins. (Location 1662)
Short-term wins don’t come about as the result of a little luck. They aren’t merely possibilities. People don’t just hope and pray for performance improvements. They plan for short-term wins, organize accordingly, and implement the plan to make things happen. The whole point is not to maximize short-term results at the expense of the future. The point is to make sure that visible results lend sufficient credibility to the transformation effort. (Location 1676)
First, people don’t plan sufficiently for these wins because they are overwhelmed. Often the urgency rate hasn’t been pushed high enough, or the vision isn’t clear. As a result, the transformation isn’t going well and people are scrambling to somehow set things right. With all the panic, planning for short-term wins doesn’t receive sufficient time or attention. (Location 1681)
people don’t even try very hard to produce these wins because they believe you can’t produce major change and achieve excellent short-term results. (Location 1684)
managers have been taught that life in organizations is a trade-off between the short run and the long run. In this belief system, you can focus long and take your lumps now or you can do well now and throw the future up for grabs. (Location 1685)
“The job of management is to win in the short term while making sure you’re in an even stronger position to win in the future.” (Location 1690)
A third element that undermines the planning for necessary wins is lack of sufficient management, especially on the guiding coalition, or a lack of commitment by key managers to the change process. To a large degree, leadership deals with the long term and management with the immediate future. Without enough good management, the planning, organizing, and controlling for results will not be sufficient. (Location 1693)
So existing information systems either fail to record important performance improvements or underestimate their size. Without competent management, tactical choices are glossed over or implemented poorly. Acquisitions (Location 1696)
If the company founder is a visionary who dislikes structure (not an unusual situation), he or she may resist the encroachment of managerial thinking, which can then prove to be a problem in this stage of a change effort. (Location 1701)
More Pressure Isn’t All Bad (Location 1711)
Targeting short-term wins during a transformation effort does increase the pressures on people. The argument is sometimes made that these extra demands are inappropriate. (Location 1711)
pressure doesn’t always produce urgency. The burden of producing short-term wins can create only stress and exhaustion. (Location 1717)
Shortterm gimmicks can produce problems in the future that often can be covered up only with more short-term gimmicks. Second, it can create more cynics and resisters among the key executives who are sophisticated enough to see what is really happening. Powerful cynics can be very disruptive. Third, it can alienate people who see the practice as unethical. (Location 1729)
The Role of Management (Location 1735)
Systematically targeting objectives and budgeting for them, creating plans to achieve those objectives, organizing for implementation, and then controlling the process to keep it on track— this is the essence of management. (Location 1735)
Because leaders are so central to any major change effort, we sometimes conclude that transformation equals leadership. Certainly without strong and capable leadership from many people, restructurings, turnarounds, and cultural changes don’t happen well or at all. But more is involved. Restructuring usually calls for financial expertise, reengineering for technical knowledge, acquisitions for strategic insight. And the process in all major change projects must be managed to keep the operation from lurching out of control or off a cliff. (Location 1739)
Q: (Location 1745)
Charismatic leaders are often poor managers, yet they have a way of convincing us that all we need to do is follow them. “Don’t worry about the mundane details; just keep the vision in mind.” “Don’t concern yourself much with the financials; they will work out fine long term.” Our intellect is usually skeptical of this kind of approach, (Location 1748)
when a charismatic leader is not a good manager and doesn’t value management skill in others, achieving short-term wins will be problematic at best. As a result, the credibility and momentum typically required to complete stage 7 of a successful transformation are rarely present. (Location 1751)
Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change (Location 1759)
short-term wins are essential to keep momentum going, but the celebration of those wins can be lethal if urgency is lost. (Location 1776)
Irrational and political resistance to change never fully dissipates. (Location 1778)
Whenever you let up before the job is done, critical momentum can be lost and regression may follow. Until changed practices attain a new equilibrium and have been driven into the culture, they can be very fragile. Three years of work can come undone with remarkable speed. Once regression begins, rebuilding momentum can be a daunting task, (Location 1789)
All organizations are made up of interdependent parts. (Location 1797)
creating change in any system of independent parts is usually not difficult. (Location 1813)
Few if any of us grew up learning how to introduce major change in highly interdependent systems. That, in turn, makes the challenge in organizations today more difficult. (Location 1828)
we often don’t adequately appreciate a crucial fact: that changing highly interdependent settings is extremely difficult because, ultimately, you have to change nearly everything (Location 1830)
Because of all the interconnections, you can rarely move just one element by itself. You have to move dozens or hundreds or thousands of elements, which is difficult and time consuming and can rarely if ever be accomplished by just a few people. (Location 1832)
So (Location 1841)
If you’ve had experience with this kind of change, you’ll know that you need to slow down at first to build up the capacity to deal successfully with the situation. Your initial question will be: Is the urgency rate, especially around the issue of helping customers, high enough around here? If the honest answer, confirmed by external sources, is yes, you move ahead. If the answer is no, then the question becomes: How can I reduce complacency and increase urgency? (Location 1845)
The net effect: You’ll end up making more changes than you imagined at first. The entire effort will take more time and energy than you initially expected. One piece of good news is that you’ll probably be in a better position to do something similar in the future, because you have both acquired skills and disconnected some of the useless wires and cables. (Location 1874)
You never have a complete sense of all the changes at the beginning. The warm-up steps take a surprising amount of time and energy. The action eventually occurs in a series of projects. As the magnitude of the effort becomes clear, you will be tempted to give up. If you stay the course, the total time involved will be lengthy. (Location 1879)
How can executives manage twenty change projects all at once? A: They can’t. In successful transformations, executives lead the overall effort and leave most of the managerial work and the leadership of specific activities to their subordinates. (Location 1890)
Running twenty change projects simultaneously is possible if (a) senior executives focus mostly on the overall leadership tasks and (b) senior executives delegate responsibility for management and more detailed leadership as low as possible in the organization. In this approach, not ten (or a hundred) but a hundred (or a thousand) people are available to help with the twenty projects. (Location 1899)
parochial political silliness. With sufficient leadership from above and lots of delegation of both management and leadership activities, twenty change projects can be run simultaneously. (Location 1916)
Because internal interconnections make change so difficult, somewhere during this stage of a major transformation effort people begin to raise questions about the need for all the interdependence. (Location 1919)
If channeled properly, these inquiries can be extremely helpful. All organizations have some unnecessary interdependencies that are the product of history instead of the current reality. (Location 1924)
Because changing anything of significance in highly interdependent systems often means changing nearly everything, business transformation can become a huge exercise that plays itself out over years, not months. At the extreme, stage 7 can become a decade-long process in which hundreds or thousands of people help lead and manage dozens of change projects. (Location 1929)
leadership is invaluable. Outstanding leaders are willing to think long term. Decades or even centuries can be meaningful time frames. Driven by compelling visions that they find personally relevant, they are willing to stay the course to accomplish objectives that are often psychologically important to them. (Location 1933)
What stage 7 looks like in a successful, major change effort• More change, not less: The guiding coalition uses the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle additional and bigger change projects.• More help: Additional people are brought in, promoted, and developed to help with all the changes.• Leadership from senior management: Senior people focus on maintaining clarity of shared purpose for the overall effort and keeping urgency levels up.• Project management and leadership from below: Lower ranks in the hierarchy both provide leadership for specific projects and manage those projects.• Reduction of unnecessary interdependencies: To make change easier in both the short and long term, managers identify unnecessary interdependencies and eliminate them. (Location 1939)
Because of the nature of management processes, managers often think in terms of much shorter time frames. For them, the short term is this week, the medium term a few months, the long term a year. With that time horizon, announcing victory and stopping change after twenty-four or thirty-six months seems logical. To people who have had a managerial mindset pounded into them for decades, three years can seem like a very, very long time. (Location 1948)
Without sufficient leadership, change stalls, and excelling in a rapidly changing world becomes problematic. (Location 1951)
Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture (Location 1953)
Because no one confronted this problem, little if any effort was made to help the new practices grow deep roots, ones that sank down into the core culture or were strong enough to replace it. Shallow roots require constant watering. As long as the GM and other change agents were there daily with the garden hose, all was well. Without that attention, the practices dried up, withered, and died. Other greenery that had been cut back, but that had deeper roots, took over. (Location 1977)
culture (and vision) tends to be more the province of leadership, just as structure (and systems) is more of a management tool. (Location 1994)
Culture refers to norms of behavior and shared values among a group of people. Norms of behavior are common or pervasive ways of acting that are found in a group and that persist because group members tend to behave in ways that teach these practices to new members, rewarding those who fit in and sanctioning those who do not. Shared values are important concerns and goals shared by most of the people in a group that tend to shape group behavior and that often persist over time even when group membership changes. (Location 1995)
Regardless of level or location, culture is important because it can powerfully influence human behavior, because it can be difficult to change, and because its near invisibility makes it hard to address directly. Generally, shared values, which are less apparent but more deeply ingrained in the culture, are more difficult to change than norms of behavior. (Location 2000)
When the new practices made in a transformation effort are not compatible with the relevant cultures, they will always be subject to regression. (Location 2003)
The day your boss goes up in smoke over something you do— that is influential. The day you say something in a meeting and a stony silence comes over the group— that is influential. The day an older secretary pulls you aside and reads you the riot act— that is influential. The net result is that you learn and assimilate the culture. (Location 2021)
Culture is powerful for three primary reasons: 1. Because individuals are selected and indoctrinated so well. 2. Because the culture exerts itself through the actions of hundreds or thousands of people. 3. Because all of this happens without much conscious intent and thus is difficult to challenge or even discuss. (Location 2032)
Consultants, industrial salespeople, and others who regularly see firms up close without being employees know well how much culture operates outside of people’s awareness, even rather visibly unusual aspects of a culture. (Location 2037)
Because corporate culture exerts this kind of influence, the new practices created in a reengineering or a restructuring or an acquisition must somehow be anchored in it; if not, they can be very fragile and subject to regression. (Location 2043)
In many transformation efforts, the core of the old culture is not incompatible with the new vision, although some specific norms will be. In that case, the challenge is to graft the new practices onto the old roots while killing off the inconsistent pieces. (Location 2045)
Anchoring a new set of practices in a culture is difficult enough when those approaches are consistent with the core of the culture. When they aren’t, the challenge can be much greater. (Location 2092)
Even after top management communicated 100 percent support for the new methods and the evidence began to accumulate that they were working, the old culture refused to die, especially in one part of the company. (Location 2096)
They talked a great deal about the evidence showing how performance improvements were linked to their new practices. 2. They talked a great deal about where the old culture had come from, how it had served the firm well, but why it was no longer helpful. 3. They offered those over fifty-five an attractive early retirement program and then worked hard to convince anyone who embraced the new culture not to leave. 4. They made doubly sure that new hires were not being informally screened according to the old norms and values. 5. They tried hard not to promote anyone who didn’t viscerally appreciate the new practices. 6. They made sure that the three candidates being considered to replace the CEO had none of the Depression-era culture in their hearts. (Location 2098)
Even with all of these efforts, killing off the old culture and creating the new one was difficult to accomplish. Shared values and group norms are persistent, especially the former (Location 2107)
When shared values are supported by the hiring of similar personalities into an organization, changing the culture may require changing people. Even when there is no personality incompatibility with a new vision, if shared values are the product of many years of experience in a firm, years of a different kind of experience are often needed to create any change. (Location 2108)
cultural change comes at the end of a transformation, not the beginning. (Location 2111)
The biggest impediment to creating change in a group is culture. Therefore, the first step in a major transformation is to alter the norms and values. After the culture has been shifted, the rest of the change effort becomes more feasible and easier to put into effect. I once believed in this model. But everything I’ve seen over the past decade tells me it’s wrong. (Location 2113)
Culture is not something that you manipulate easily. Attempts to grab it and twist it into a new shape never work because you can’t grab it. (Location 2116)
Culture changes only after you have successfully altered people’s actions, after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, and after people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement. Thus, most cultural change happens in stage 8, not stage 1. (Location 2117)
This does not mean that a sensitivity to cultural issues isn’t essential in the first phases of a transformation. The better you understand the existing culture, the more easily you can figure out how to push the urgency level up, how to create the guiding coalition, how to shape the vision, and so forth. (Location 2119)
the actual changing of powerful norms and values occurs mostly in the very last stage of the process, or at least the very last stage in each cycle of the process. So if one of the change cycles in a larger transformation effort is associated with a reengineering project in department X, that project will end with an effort to anchor the work in the department’s culture. (Location 2124)
Whenever you hear of a major restructuring, reengineering, or strategic redirection in which step 1 is “changing the culture,” you should be concerned that it might be going down the wrong path. (Location 2127)
attitude and behavior change typically begin early in a transformation process. These alterations then create changes in practices that help a firm produce better products or services at lower costs. But only at the end of the change cycle does most of this become anchored in the culture. (Location 2128)
Anchoring change in a culture• Comes last, not first: Most alterations in norms and shared values come at the end of the transformation process.• Depends on results: New approaches usually sink into a culture only after it’s very clear that they work and are superior to old methods.• Requires a lot of talk: Without verbal instruction and support, people are often reluctant to admit the validity of new practices.• May involve turnover: Sometimes the only way to change a culture is to change key people.• Makes decisions on succession crucial: If promotion processes are not changed to be compatible with the new practices, the old culture will reassert itself. (Location 2137)
Major change is never successful unless the complacency level is low. A high urgency rate helps enormously in completing all the stages of a transformation process. (Location 2160)
If the rate of external change continues to climb, then the urgency rate of the winning twenty-first-century organization will have to be medium to high all the time. The twentieth-century model of lengthy periods of calm or complacency being punctuated by shorter periods of hectic activity will not work. (Location 2161)
A higher rate of urgency does not imply ever present panic, anxiety, or fear. It means a state in which complacency is virtually absent, in which people are always looking for both problems and opportunities, and in which the norm is “do it now.” (Location 2163)
corporate cultures in the twenty-first century will have to value candid discussions far more than they do today. (Location 2174)
the change begins with a single powerful person, spreads from him or her to a few others through example, produces some group benefit, and then spreads still more widely. (Location 2179)
In an environment of constant change, individuals, even if supremely talented, won’t have enough time or expertise to absorb rapidly shifting competitor, customer, and technological information. (Location 2186)
I can imagine a day not long from now when succession at the top of firms may no longer be an exercise in picking one person to replace another. Succession could be a process of picking at least the core of a team. (Location 2189)
promoting teams instead of individuals and eliminating gigantic egos and snakes— will ever be accepted without considerable controversy. Succession as a team choice is a radical thought, especially in the United States, with its lone-cowboy tradition. (Location 2195)
Only in the last decade or so has much thought gone into developing leaders— people who can create and communicate visions and strategies. Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we will have to become much more skilled at creating leaders. Without enough leaders, the vision, communication, and empowerment that are at the heart of transformation will simply not happen well enough or fast enough to satisfy our needs and expectations. (Location 2210)
In stiff bureaucracies, young men and women with potential typically see few good role models, are not encouraged to lead, and may even be punished if they go out of bounds, challenge the status quo, and take risks. These kinds of organizations tend either to repel people with leadership potential or to take those individuals and teach them only about bureaucratic management. (Location 2223)
Successful organizations in the twenty-first century will have to become more like incubators of leadership. Wasting talent will become increasingly (Location 2226)
constant empowerment for a constantly changing world works best in organizations in which senior managers focus on leadership and in which they delegate most managerial responsibilities to lower levels. (Location 2238)
flat hierarchies, little bureaucracy, a propensity for risk taking, workforces that largely manage themselves, and senior-level people who focus on providing leadership for client projects, technological development, or customer service. The model has already been tested. With proper leadership at the top, it works extremely well. (Location 2245)
An organization with more delegation, which means a lean and flat hierarchy, is in a far superior position to maneuver than one with a big, change-resistant lump in the middle. This fact alone will force more delegation over the next few decades, despite all the excuses offered as to why that’s a bad idea. (Location 2267)
In the twenty-first century, a volatile business environment will force more organizations to coordinate their subunits quickly and inexpensively. (Location 2276)
Instead of waiting for interdependencies to reach unmanageable levels, the effective organization in the next century will reexamine linkages on a more regular basis and eliminate those that are no longer relevant. (Location 2280)
Linkages give power to some people who are then often reluctant to give it up. Linkages become habits. Deciding what is a relevant linkage and what is a historical artifact can occasionally be difficult, especially in the absence of a broader vision and strategy guiding the organization. Nevertheless, some people today succeed wonderfully here with obsessive attention to this issue. (Location 2284)
Cultures can facilitate adaptation if they value performing well for an organization’s constituencies, if they really support competent leadership and management, if they encourage teamwork at the top, and if they demand a minimum of layers, bureaucracy, and interdependencies. (Location 2290)
The twenty-first-century employee will need to know more about both leadership and management than did his or her twentieth-century counterpart. (Location 2331)
Competitive drive helped create lifelong learning, which kept increasing skill and knowledge levels, especially leadership skills, which in turn produced a prodigious ability to deal with an increasingly difficult and fast-moving global economy. Like Manny, people with high standards and a strong willingness to learn became measurably stronger and more able leaders at age fifty than they had been at age forty. (Location 2373)
He reflected on good times and bad, and tried to learn from both. Confronting his mistakes, he minimized the arrogant attitudes that often accompany success. With a relatively humble view of himself, he watched more closely and listened more carefully than did most others. As he learned, he relentlessly tested new ideas, even if that meant pushing himself out of his zone of comfort or taking some personal risks. (Location 2391)
Listening with an open mind, trying new things, reflecting honestly on successes and failures— none of this requires a high IQ, an MBA degree, or a privileged background. (Location 2394)
Lifelong learners take risks. Much more than others, these men and women push themselves out of their comfort zones and try new ideas. While most of us become set in our ways, they keep experimenting. (Location 2419)
Risk taking inevitably produces both bigger successes and bigger failures. Much more than most of us, lifelong learners humbly and honestly reflect on their experiences to educate themselves. They don’t sweep failure under the rug or examine it from a defensive position that undermines their ability to make rational conclusions. (Location 2421)
Mental habits that support lifelong learning• Risk taking: Willingness to push oneself out of comfort zones• Humble self-reflection: Honest assessment of successes and failures, especially the latter• Solicitation of opinions: Aggressive collection of information and ideas from others• Careful listening: Propensity to listen to others• Openness to new ideas: Willingness to view life with an open mind (Location 2424)
Lifelong learners actively solicit opinions and ideas from others. They don’t make the assumption that they know it all or that most other people have little to contribute. Just the opposite, they believe that with the right approach, they can learn from anyone under almost any circumstance. (Location 2430)
Much more than the average person, lifelong learners also listen carefully, and they do so with an open mind. They don’t assume that listening will produce big ideas or important information very often. Quite the contrary. But they know that careful listening will help give them accurate feedback on the effect of their actions. And without honest feedback, learning becomes almost impossible. (Location 2432)
Risk taking brings failure as well as success. Honest reflection, listening, solicitation of opinions, and openness bring bad news and negative feedback as well as interesting ideas. In the short term, life is generally more pleasant without failure and negative feedback. Lifelong learners overcome a natural human tendency to shy away from or abandon habits that produce short-term pain. (Location 2438)
The very best lifelong learners and leaders I’ve known seem to have high standards, ambitious goals, and a real sense of mission in their lives. Such goals and aspirations spur them on, put their accomplishments in a humbling perspective, and help them endure the short-term pain associated with growth. (Location 2443)
People who learn to master more volatile career paths also usually become more comfortable with change generally and thus better able to play more useful roles in organizational transformations. They more easily develop whatever leadership potential they have. With more leadership, they are in a better position to help their employers advance the transformation process so as to significantly improve meaningful results while minimizing the painful effects of change. (Location 2463)
