What leaders DO: lead change
New books on leadership seem to appear almost daily and many of them have useful insights, but Epic Change: How to Lead Change in the Global Age
Clark left Oxford to find an academic position in the US, but instead spent eight years as a plant manager before the company closed its doors—a victim of global competition.
Considering that the average tenure of CEOs is 44 months and that the primary reasons are lack of vision and inability to deal with change the book is of paramount importance because of its insights on dealing with change, but it’s a good read that won’t put you to sleep.
As Clark points out, change is happening at a faster rate and a grander scale than ever before and the need to adapt to that change is critical to the very survival of a company.
“Randy MacDonald, senior vice president of human resources at IBM, which employs 330,000 people around the world, estimates that 22 percent of the organization’s workforce will have obsolete skills in only three years.”
To the oft cited three types of knowledge—personal, organizational and market—needed to lead, Clark adds a fourth—global.
How can you innovate if your thinking is confined to your existing market…you must keep your eyebrows raised to macrolevel trends… Leaders are now obliged to scale their awareness and push out traditional boundaries because what’s distant, remote or removed today can threaten your competitiveness tomorrow.”
Beyond his own shattering personal experience watching the death throes of his employer, Clark analyzed 53 organizations across the spectrum—business, education, health-care, government and non-profits—going through a variety of changes—mission shifts, new business models, mergers/acquisitions—and found four stages that each passed through, with success a function of how well each stage was accomplished.
The stages are evaluation, preparation, implementation and consolidation.
In their proper order, the pragmatic terms describing the four stages are the source for both the name of the book and the structure of Clark’s EPIC Methodology.
The bulleted summary at the end of each chapter provides an excellent reminder for leaders intent on using the methodology.
EPIC Change has enormous value to those responsible for leading, but it also has real value for those who follow—no matter the level at which you work.
Knowledgeable followers are of the greatest value to good leaders as well as being the bane of the bad and inept ones.
Being knowledgeable yields up an additional benefit for followers—with your eyes open to what should be you’re more aware when it isn’t and therefore more able to make informed personal decisions regarding when to stay and when to leave.
I highly recommend EPIC Change, I think you’ll enjoy it and find it extremely useful.
How well do you/your leaders handle the challenge of change?
Your comments—priceless
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POSTED IN: About leadership, Change, Culture, Followers, Management, Reading Recommendations, What leaders DO
2 opinions for What leaders DO: lead change
Bob Turek
Jan 4, 2008 at 8:43 am
Miki- nice post about a book from an author with credibility built from his plant manager experience. There is nothing like a manufacturing environment to give you experience with change, whether it’s simply an increased rate of the same type of process (customer order change rate) or a complete makeover of business processes. His looking-outside-the-market approach is what many innovative companies have set up a standardized research process for, using an organization like a PMO, to at first lead it and then present justified, strategy-aligned, projectized innovations to top executives. I compare the degree of change, and therefore degree of preparation required, to surfing in that small, ridable waves are giving way to large less certain waves that can hurt or drown you. You’ve got to be prepared with more and better “equipment” and a higher level of skill. Interestingly, good big wave conditions are called “EPIC” but few can ride them.
Miki Saxon
Jan 4, 2008 at 9:52 am
Bob, the problem is that it’s the EPIC waves that today’s business heads must learn to ride if they want their companies to survive. As useful as a PMO can be there is no way it can substitute for the needed actions of the company head. In fact, I think that any any CEO who thinks there is a way to hand off architecting the company’s future deserves to be gone. Delegate tasks, yes, but that top person still bears the responsibility of providing a cohesive vision based on understanding global trends.
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