Managing Change More Effectively -- executives and us authors/practitioners in different worlds?

[Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD]

Today's CLO Executive Briefing has an article "Managing Change More Effectively" that shares some useful insights about what leaders (executives?) have said they could have done to improve their projects for change. It's a useful article especially because it includes the leaders/participants' points of view. In 15 years of facilitating leaders (probably 750-800) in internal peer coaching groups, including in Fortune 100 companies around the world, I hear them talk about topics that usually aren't mentioned in the many article/resources about managing change today, e.g., they mention: 1) We didn't know what "success" was in the first place, so, sure, we weren't "successful,": 2) everything we do is a project for change, so what are the authors and gurus even talking about? 3) too many gurus focus only on the soft skills and don't realize that we have some hard business results to achieve, 4) if projects for change aren't successful, then perhaps the problem isn't us leaders -- perhaps it's the gurus who write about change. So I'm beginning to wonder if we authors/researchers are not doing enough to work FROM leaders by getting their input about guidelines for change, and a little less of our preaching AT them about what they need to do to change. Your thoughts?

[Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD]

I got an impassioned email a few minutes ago, asking for more examples of significantly different perspectives between us authors/practitioners and people in the workplace. Here are several more examples of what I've regularly noticed during my immersion with leaders in the workplace.

"Supervision": We authors/practitioners primarily mean entry-level supervisors. Leaders in the workplace mean all levels,e.g., the CEO supervising the COO. ----- "Leadership": We mean executives. They see leadership as being throughout the organization, e.g., supervisors leading people. ----- "Leading": We mean traits of leading organizations. They mean skills which are different depending on whether leading yourself or other individuals or groups or organizations. ----- "Organizations": We focus on feelings, beliefs and perceptions. They focus on structures, plans and policies. ----- "HR": We see people development. They see staffing and personnel policies. ----- "Trainings": We see developing new knowledge. They see developing new skills. ------ "Projects for change": We see focused projects. They see what they do all the time anyway.