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Category Archives: Change

Organizational design

Monday, August 11, 2008

Some time ago we looked at Peter Drucker’s views on what managers do. But what about the organization itself – how is it to be designed to help managers grow power, as Mary Parker Follett argued it should, in such away that it is available as capacity where needed? To begin with, let’s look at this summary, from Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, which Drucker provided of his thinking on the topic . . .

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Why change?

Monday, June 23, 2008

Just as the tumult about how to be a leader drowns out consideration of what leadership is and why we should trouble ourselves about it, the rush to ride the crest of change often begs the question of what is wagging what. That is: why change?

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Leadership and implementing change

Friday, June 20, 2008

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 [...]

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Assessing change and leadership

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Even leaving aside the highly problematic argument that a leader’s role is to change people, the question of change as more generally a leadership function given expression in organizations has its own shortcomings. Most of these are self-inflicted. . .

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Change and leadership

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

This topic has captured the imagination of the modern leadership movement like few - perhaps no - other. Some argue that, at bottom, the fundamental role of a leader is just that: to implement change; in organizations, people, or both. Others declare boldly that there is a new heaven in the firmament of transcendent hero-leaders, this one populated by “change-agents,” a supreme level of the priesthood whose novitiates are mysteriously elected from the leaders who previously thought they were already at the crown and roof of things. The notion that the leader’s role is to change people is a particularly disturbing one for modern societies to seriously entertain. . .

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