Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.
In The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of HowPeople Change Their Organizations (Harvard Business SchoolPress), John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen build on the eight-stepchange process from Kotter's 1996 Leading Change(Harvard Business School Press). The book relies on hundreds ofinterviews of senior managers at companies undergoing major change.Cohen's employer, Deloitte Consulting; did the interviewing.Kotter analyzed the results. His key finding: People change whentheir feelings change, not when their thoughts change.
If you're leading a companythrough change, say the authors, make employees feel differently byappealing to their emotions rather than making them thinkdifferently by appealing to their rational side. In practice, thatmeans using stories, pictures, roleplaying and personal contactrather than spreadsheets, mission statements and other analytical,rational tools. For instance, one company tells how it got itsemployees energized to focus on customers by playing a videotape ofan important customer complaining about problems with its products.Other ideas are equally specific and easy to use, in companies ofany size.
Chaos Reigns
"When youpersonally face a business situation with an uncertain outcome, youimagine, anticipate and prepare for at least three possibleoutcomes so that you are not surprised by what actually happens.You do this: always, frequently, occasionally, rarely." Thatis one of 20 questions in a Volatility Leadership Assessmentincluded in Leading on the Edge of Chaos: The 10 CriticalElements for Success in Volatile Times (Prentice HallPress) by Emmett C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy. Only after you testyour ability to lead in chaotic times do the bestselling co-authorsof 1997's Leadership IQ (Wiley) recommend tackling the10-step how-to in this book. The assessment will help you identifyareas you need to work on, while the how-to helps yourchaos-calming skills. To get you started, any answer other than"always" to the above question means you could stand someimprovement.
Austin, Texas, writer Mark Henricks has covered business andtechnology for leading publications since 1981.
