Page 174 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Managers and leadership
participation as a way of keeping up a flow of work and ensuring the involve-
ment of others in the management process.
The effective leader may well be the ‘mandarin’, i.e. politically shrewd (in the
ways of his or her own organization). Ready to respond to the needs of others,
such leaders control enough of their time to give the lead, to sustain effort, to
maintain momentum, to motivate others, to articulate vision and so on. The
effective leader may well be the person capable of meeting the varying demands
made on him or her while undertaking a workable balance of the various roles,
workable for the given organization at a particular point in time. It has to be said
that we do not know. Many of the biographies produced by well-regarded corpo-
rate leaders might be read along these lines but we are woefully short of clear evi-
dence. What I have attempted to do in this chapter is piece together the various
ideas and some relevant evidence to illustrate what we do know about corporate
leaders as people and about the situations within which they work. If the picture
turns out to be rather complex, at least we have the outline of the emphases that
effective corporate leaders might provide for their organizations and their own
people. In later chapters I will develop this into guidelines on how to analyse sit-
uations, recognize the management and leadership options available and assess
the likely advantages and disadvantages of each.
However, what seems clear is that Deal and Kennedy (1982, page 8) may well
be right when they suggest that ‘Business certainly needs managers to make the
trains run on time; it more desperately needs heroes to get the engine going.’ They
go on to say that heroes do the following:

■ Symbolize the company to the outside world.
■ Preserve what makes a company special.
■ Set a standard of performance.
■ Motivate employees.
■ Provide role models.
■ Make success attainable and human.

Perhaps this last point is the key. The effective corporate leaders bring human

scale to risk, change, success, challenge and crisis. They translate the pressures
that can confuse or paralyse so many into acceptable levels. They are not afraid
to fail. Nor are they afraid to question, to ask why. Their approach to leadership
is both skilled and thoughtful (following Mant, 1983). Thus it is that they
become credible and successful.
Ben & Jerry’s is a company which created a new vogue in ice cream. It was cre-
ated by two friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield and grew quickly to rival
Haagen-Daz in the premium market. In 1995 they appointed a new CEO. The
appointee famously produced a poem called ‘Time, values and ice cream’ as part
of his submission for the appointment. It seems clear that in seeking a new CEO
they looked for operational experience and a commitment to the values which
had driven Ben & Jerry’s, which sees prosperity emerging out of commitment to
the product, to a social mission in the community and to an economic mission.
How can a new leader expect to provide the necessary unifying focus without
similar beliefs? But that is not enough. Also needed is the operational credibility

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