The Leadership of Corporate Change

Abstract

Leadership of corporate change in ways that keep the organization on a path of continuous and uninterrupted progress remains the singularly most important task facing corporations today. The recent reversals of IBM, GM, Kodak, Sears, American Express, Westinghouse, and an endless number of others, demonstrates that the leadership of some of America's most respected companies have not learned how to do it.

In this article, we seek to identify and explain the missing knowledge links that explain the failures. We point to how leaders might implement the insights essential for constant progress and development. By and large, these insights come from the behavioral sciences and go beyond reliance on common sense; they are neither technical, nor difficult to grasp. They call for conceptual thinking and diagnosis with dynamic leadership to replace power-driven, mechanistic approaches upon which change currently relies.

This article starts with a description in Part I of the top team of Magribam. Part II offers a description of the Grid and its use in the top team to analyze their own effectiveness. Thereafter, in Part III, the top group analyzes the dynamics of individual, team, and organization change.