Page 175 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 9 ■ Leadership in practice
to create momentum for change and to bring to bear new ideas to achieve
improved performance. But a belief in the product was also essential – hence the
poem. Was the most convincing aspect of the new CEO’s contribution that he
brought human scale to the process of leadership?

Leadership and ‘human scale’

What do we mean when we say that effective leaders are those who bring human
scale to risk, challenge, success and crisis? Tennyson captures part of our thought in
the line:
Pray God our greatness may not fail, thro’ craven fears of being great.
Tennyson, 1885
We argue that the effective leader is not afraid to fail. The fear of failure can be
as paralysing as the fear of freedom (Fromm, 1944).
Summarizing Fromm’s powerful argument very briefly, modern industrial
capitalism (he makes no distinction between state and corporate capitalism) has
freed us from traditional bonds of nature, caste and religion. It contributed
tremendously to the increase of positive freedom, to the growth of an active,
critical, responsible self. However, it also made the individual more alone and
isolated, creating in the individual a sense of insignificance and powerlessness.
Isolated and powerless, many individuals are afraid to depend on themselves;
rather, they attempt to submerge the self. Taking risks, trying out new ideas and
experimenting bring attention to oneself. This is difficult for many and, as we
have already seen, much of the way in which we structure and manage organi-
zations serves to reinforce this already powerful tendency. What then can the
leader do? Fromm suggests that ‘progress . . . lies in enhancing the actual free-
dom, initiative and spontaneity of the individual . . . above all in the activity
fundamental to every man’s existence, his work’.
In my view the leader who can bring human scale to organizational problems
can do two things: first, cope with the pressure on the self, the leader’s fear of fail-

ure, the stress and pressure of the circumstances to be handled; second, find ways
of helping others to cope with the pressures on them. In practical terms this
means facing the issues addressed in previous chapters. Fromm identifies three
escape mechanisms which are directly relevant to our argument.
People experiencing the fear of freedom will also experience the fear of failure
because they must take risks in order to build their own selves. Those incapable of
doing so rely on three principal escape mechanisms: authoritarianism, dull con-
formity and destructiveness. How many times have you come across managers, at
all levels, who become more autocratic as the pressure on them builds? ABF Ltd
is an example of both the situation and its consequences, a vicious circle leading to
decline (see Chapter 11). How many times have you noticed that employees
subjected to changes respond with apathetic conformity? One has the changes
‘bolted in’ but does one have commitment? How many times have you seen
opposition to new ideas before they have been given a chance? These are the
three mechanisms to which Fromm refers – emerging out of the pressures and
uncertainties of a changing world.
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