Leadership and Change

An article by Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Robert E. Mansfield, Jr.     3 Comments

Dealing with and leading change is possibly one of the most challenging tasks a leader faces.  The leadership of change is made difficult because organizations have developed a culture to eliminate variation; to standardize processes— to resist the forces of change that tend to disrupt processes and create new and different ones.  If history of change is the judge, most organizations fail to change when they should, and those who do try, most also fail to meet their desired results.

Last November, both the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company magazines had feature articles on the leadership of change.  The Fast Company (http://www.fastcompany.com/3001734/secrets-generation-flux) article focused on individual leaders that the author, Editor Robert Safian, has labeled the “Flux Leader;” members of “Generation Flux.”   In general, members of this generation and its leaders “characteristics are clear: an embrace of adaptability and flexibility; an openness to learning from anywhere; decisiveness tempered by the knowledge that business life today can shift radically” in very short periods of time.  Safian points out that, “Accepted models for success are proving vulnerable, and pressure is building on giants like GE and Nokia, as their historic advantages of scale and efficiency run up against the benefits of agility and quick course corrections.”  Observations such as these have been around for some time.  For instance, Stephan Haeckel’s thoughts on sense and respond organizations and maybe a bit more tangentially the work at the Santa Fe Institute on chaos theory and self organizing systems gave early indications of organizations are facing today.  What is enlightening about the Fast Company article is the range of company leaders as practicing flux leadership.  They range from Cisco Systems, to the U.S. Army to small entrepreneurial firms.

In the Harvard Business Review article, long recognized authority on change leadership John Kotter begins, “Perhaps the greatest challenge business leaders face today is how to stay competitive amid constant turbulence and disruption.”   The tie to Safian’s is clear (to me).  While Safian describes the leaders and the environment, Kotter describes the business reality of established firms.  The need for operating system of managerial processes, standards and traditional hierarchies are necessary to running a company.  He concludes that, “The solution is a second operating system, devoted to the design and implementation of strategy, that uses an agile, network like structure and a very different set of processes.”  These two operating systems function complementary to each other.  In Kotter’s view, having these two work in concert can be a solution to effectively running the current organization while implementing the change strategy.  The shift is from focusing resources on daily operations of doing current business very well to also “constantly seeking competitive advantage without disrupting daily operations.”

Kotter, seems to imply a somewhat new definition of strategy in this age of business turbulence and disruption, “the whole notion of strategy…has to evolve. Strategy should be viewed as a dynamic force that constantly seeks opportunities, identifies initiatives that will capitalize on them, and completes those initiatives swiftly and efficiently.”  Kotter goes on to describe his eight-step method and eight accelerators on which his strategy systems runs.  Much like Safian’s observations are not new, nor are Kotter’s.  The Hammer and Champy’s reengineering movement of the early 1990’s proposes similar approaches and Xerox’s PARC organization is an example from the 1970’s.  What Kotter has done a start of how to better link standard business operations to effective adaption to change.  How they are applied will be particular to each industry and business.

My next blog entry will make some observations on Safian and Kotter observations and approaches related to the aviation and aerospace industry.

And, all the best for a Happy 2013!!