Page 176 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Exercises

Conclusion

Bringing human scale to the problems of organization and change is about prag-
matism. It is about resolving today’s problems today. One needs to give people a
vision of the future, but one also needs to help them to see the stepping-stones
along the way. The leader needs to cope with change, so do followers. It seems to
me that this is the ultimate defining characteristic of effective corporate leaders.
They can energize and sustain people to act, to try things out, to get on with the
job in hand. They can energize people to try. Thus to conclude this chapter I
argue that the practical side of leadership depends not on grand theories but,
rather, on the ability to encourage others into action. This depends on the man-
agement of attention, measuring trust and self, as Bennis (1984) makes clear. But
it also depends on credibility. The leader’s vision needs to be credible. People
need to perceive the credible actions that they can take and that they feel they
can control. Thus we bring ‘human scale’ to leadership and change.
Few would argue that risk aversion has not been a common characteristic of
organizations, particularly larger organizations. Many may think that this is
changing. One fairly recent survey suggests that the problem lives on. A sur-
vey of the role of IT (Birchall, 1993) examined ‘barriers to change’. A sample
of respondents from large and medium-sized companies was asked to list bar-
riers to IT implementation. Items such as ‘staff prefer structured organization’
(60 per cent of respondents), management control of homeworkers (50 per
cent), organization risk averse (38 per cent), rigid organization hierarchy (15
per cent) all may well be linked to risk aversion. The leadership challenge is all
too clear given also the other barriers linked to perceived lack of IT capability.
Clear vision and leadership will evidently be needed where risk aversion is
combined with perceived lack of capability. As we shall see, success here
includes the leader’s cognitive style which here we suggest may relate to the ability
to create ‘human scale’.

EXERCISES

1 From your reading of the business press available to you, can you identify a key
corporate leader? How does this leader display the competencies we have listed?

2 How important is the situational model of leadership as a training and develop-
ment tool?
3 What do you think are the behaviours required of successful leaders in a period
of change?

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