Let’s leave aside - just for today - the many difficult questions raised together with the problematic prospect of change in an organization. We will presume, for the sake of our main discussion, that we have a perfectly valid and widely accepted change project under consideration.
What does it do to or for the organization? This is a subject that clearly activates both parts of that question.
To begin with, a change project attempts to redirect the organization’s attention to new goals, a new view of the future, and a new means of addressing and even thriving in it. It instills the firm with directed energy where there, perhaps, previously was only unthinking habit. It infuses action with discipline and force.
Many will argue that this definitively places change in the leadership function category. Certainly, the future-orientation does. That alone is a good enough reason to stipulate to the idea that organizational change is indeed a leadership function.
But before moving on, we should observe that it also represents, if you will, change. It is a disruption, and will alter the organizational landscape, depriving some of high ground, thrusting others into prominence, and repositioning the action orientation of the firm.
Moreover, this unfolding of new organizational terrain, both its internal implications together with its new relations with the surrounding environment, only becomes apparent to different elements within the organization in varying ways over differing time periods.
These potentially confounding features make the question of whether it is distinct from management less clear. But there is more:
The attendant effects referred to above - energy, discipline, force, and the like - are also often associated with (individual) leadership. But note two things about them:
First, they are not here primary activities undertaken for their own sake; they are side effects of a particular initiative. Second, they have the tendency to support managerial efforts to cultivate, marshal and deploy assets in the pursuit of a specific organizational aim. As a consequence, they are properly viewed as tools of management to be anticipated and disciplined to the implementation of the project. That this is a change project is immaterial to that effect.
I would argue, then, that organizational change is primarily a leadership function, but one inescapably infused with managerial features.
So, where does it come from? The key in this question with respect to organizational change is how does it actually happen - how does it result in a successful implementation of change in a firm?
Now, you can imagine a leader marching about, holding the change banner aloft, giving people hope and rallying their efforts - leading change. Or you can get serious about a complex and profoundly fundamental project that must be managed and monitored with the most intricate attention - managing change.
Due to its potential relationship with vision, change - its initiation - can be something an owner or director properly does. But typically a manager will see, anticipate, or acknowledge the need for valid change, and is more ordinarily the source of such initiatives in more mature organizations (although not always the appropriate approving authority). And, in either event, it is managers who implement.
So there you have it: organizational change is a leadership function imbued with management functions, and that is subordinate - in implementation if not in initiation - to management. Moreover, when it is not subordinate to management in initiation, it is only legitimately attributable to owners or their agents. In that sense, leadership is itself subordinate to ownership or management.
Or, at least, that’s my view. I’ve tried to defend it, but if I haven’t convinced you, please let me have your thoughts.
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Today’s tips: Speaking of confusion about the roles and origin of leadership, management, and ownership, please see this energetic indictment of the very fiduciary infrastructure of American business, by Carl Icahn, posted at his site, The Icahn Report. (For more on this from these pages, please see the corporate governance category, or this popular series on the topic.)
Please also stop over to Wally Bock’s Three Star Leadership for a list of some truly essential daily reading for serious managers. As it happens, they were all on my reading list but for Ann Bares’s Compensation Force - it now is, and it offers a powerful perspective on practical management issues that you will all want to have available for yourselves as well.
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4 Comments
Jim,
This “chicken and/or egg” conundrum always fascinates me.
My experiences with large-scale corporate change indicates that nothing changes until people start doing something differently at the operational level. The most successful “changes” have been the result of specific “projects” that led to the desired shift. These were managed in the purest sense of the word. But they were led by a top executive who tied performance rewards directly to successful implementation and who consistently followed through with people on “how they were doing with Project X.”
The least successful efforts have been those “led” by a CEO or executive who traveled the company talking about the “importance of change” and using terminology from the latest business book. Their messages lacked the kind of specificity that offered direction that could be acted upon.
Now…off to read your recommendations.
Hi Steve,
I recognize in detail from my own experience what you are saying, here. While I’ve been generally focusing in these recent posts on change projects that are global in nature and necessarily involve top-level decision-makers, it is true that change programs, formal or less so, occur at various levels for a variety of reasons (this is actually part of the topic of Monday’s post).
Your identification of the operational level being the litmus test of change’s influence (one way or the other) in an organization is, of course right on the mark. Your reference to such a program having been managed but necessarily also “led” by a top executive (who also integrated its management into the overall assessment/compensation system) also describes how things in this regard really happen (at least, those that reach an operational conclusion, rather than simply fade away).
In such an event, we may be talking about two things - one is the initiation of a change that is properly within the ambit of a manager’s authority (such as a strictly operational issue that does not necessarily affect the firm’s strategic identity. I, in this discussion, have been assuming the consideration of change programs that do that, and that thus must, in my view, be undertaken at the initiative (or informed, meaningful approval) of owners or their agents, rather than managers.
The other issue is the nature of that initiation (of a change program) - whether it is properly generated by a senior manager, or by a director or owner. In either case, due to the introduction of a new way of operating designed to pursue a new appreciation of the facts or vision of the future, we are likely talking about something that can be defined as a leadership function.
But the question is, as such, is it necessarily distinct from and/or superior to management? Even if you identify such an initiator of change as a leader, he or she is expressing that role only in the context of his or her larger role as either an owner/director, in the event the change is strategic in nature, or as a CEO/senior executive, in the event the change is operational in nature. In my view, it is thus - or at least best - viewed and treated as being subordinate to the primary (owner/steward or managerial) role.
My concern is that viewing it as evidence of some sort of transcendent leadership characteristic runs the risk of undocking the activity from the purpose for which it is undertaken. This sort of thing tends to lead to the problem you identify in your last paragraph.
Here’s another response that perhaps should have been a post, but I think it makes more sense right here alongside your observations - for which I thank you!
Jim –
I agree with you. Leading change also requires a strong set of managerial skills. Where I often se leader’s drop the managerial ball is shortly after the kick-off. They are there for the hoopla and the visioning and such, but fail to show they are committed to the change throughout the drudgery of developing implementation plans. When this happens, people in the organization begin to believe that this change is no longer a high priority and they turn their attention elsewhere.
Thanks for such a thoughtful post.
Rick Maurer
http://www.beyondresistance.com
http://www.changemanagementnews.com (blog)
Hello Rick,
You make a great point about follow-through - adding to Steve’s mention of the importance of such change-initiators who make their presence and interest known throughout the process. It certainly is true that people will do what is inspected, at the cost of what isn’t.
Thanks for the links to your sites, also - great resources for managers interested in learning more about change in organizations!
Thanks again for your visit, your kind comments, and your work.
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