Preface
IT HAS BECOME de rigueur to state that change is occurring in multiple arenas, all at once, and faster than ever before in recorded history. Leaders do not need to be told this. They are experiencing it firsthand. What smart leaders want and need is a way to get ahead of the curve. Instead of using every ounce of energy to just keep up, smart leaders want to approach change in ways that continuously build positive energy, create greater change capacity, and leave their organizations stronger. What’s more, they want to help their organizations make all the changes they should make simultaneously, not just one or two or a few at a time. Change is multifaceted and continuous. Smart leaders know they cannot pretend otherwise.
Until now our approach to change has been built around models that were developed with single changes in mind. We assumed, because we had no alternative, that simply applying these approaches to multiple changes occurring at the same time would work. Then we discovered something we did not expect. As we turned our attention to doing one change well, we took our eye off another and another. People who assumed responsibility for making individual changes were unable to get the resources or support they needed to get the job done. In some cases, the work on one change undid progress that had been made on another. It became clear that we needed a better way to get on top of everything, but we weren’t sure how. Some organizations appointed change czars to sort out the priorities and conflicts. This seemed to help a little, but then they discovered that a single czar could not stay on top of everything. If they appointed more czars, they just got in one another’s way. What to do?
I have spent my entire career studying change, assisting with change, and leading change in organizations. For me and the organizations I work with, change equals improvement. We need to improve to remain competitive and to provide job security and returns to shareholders. We see that change is necessary, and most of us want desperately to succeed at it. Yet we know that change is not easy and improvement is not guaranteed.
It is painful to watch people start change efforts with great hope and later become overwhelmed by the difficulty or complexity of change. I have worked with chief executive officers (CEOs) and senior teams who are wholly dedicated to success, yet they still struggle. I’ve also worked with CEOs and teams who were not as committed. In these instances I sometimes become frustrated in my efforts to help them understand the difference between their stated intentions and actual behaviors.
What prompted me to write this book is that I wasn’t as successful a change agent as I felt I needed to be. It’s not that I lacked education, experience, or skill. I have been a scholar-practitioner in the field for almost 40 years, teaching at such institutions as Columbia, Stanford, INSEAD, and Case Western Reserve and working with organizations ranging from the Fortune Global 100 to small nonprofits. Rather, I found that the available approaches were inadequate to provide guidance to those who wanted to take on the world or to confront those who remained intentionally oblivious as the world around them changed.
As you will read here, change efforts fail between 50 and 75 percent of the time; our track record is simply unacceptable. Now, as we are confronted with even more and faster change, I have worried about our ability to keep up. We need to get better at change—much better—and we need to do so quickly. I have been inspired by some of my clients, who are taking steps to either get on top of change or stay ahead of it. You will read about some of them here.
I am in this work for the people who show up at the plant or office every day, trying to do a good job, and find that something about their organization is getting in the way of making things better. I’m in it for the leaders who want to serve those people by creating the most effective organizations in the world. I know that they can win—they being the leaders, the shareholders, the employees, and the customers—only if everything works together. We need the right talent, the right business models, the right systems and processes, the right leadership, and so forth. We also need agility because the world is changing at an accelerating rate in ways that are more and more important to us. What is “right” is constantly changing. We can’t have these things unless we are capable of changing; and what’s more, we can’t reach our goal by changing just one thing at a time. We must learn to lead complex, continuous change.
If someone could give us a magic wand for successful change, we would take it. Faster change, less resistance, better execution—these are things we all desire. The material and approach presented here will not provide that magic wand, but you will learn something about what managing complex, continuous change requires and you’ll pick up some new tools you can use. Mostly, this book does not feel like the final answer to me, but it does feel like progress. If we continue to experiment with the methods outlined here, we will learn and improve—and in this crazy world, perhaps that’s as good as it gets.
By the way, if you are interested in taking a self-assessment on the mindsets introduced in this book as the foundation for leading continuous change, there is a link in Appendix B to the Leading Continuous Change Self-Assessment companion product. Progress begins with knowing where we are; this tool can help you understand the starting point for your journey.