Different levels of change

Change can occur at different conceptual or practical levels. Mintzberg and Westley’s framework (see Figure 10.3) provides a useful means of separating out, and seeing the interrelationships between, the more organisational versus the more strategic aspects of change and relating these to different levels of thought versus action.⁷ For example, changing an organisation’s vision for the future will necessitate changing the organisation’s culture if this new vision is to be achieved, all of which will require a lot of conceptual work. This should then trickle down to more practical, but congruent, actions relating to the organisation’s facilities and people or human resources to ensure consistency of corporate identity.

It can also be useful to develop a clearer understanding of whether what is envisaged is a more strategic- or more operational-level change, and what differences of approach this might necessitate, before embarking on the change. For this purpose, David Wilson’s framework, pictured in Figure 10.4, is very helpful.⁸

Different change needs and styles

Different organisations in different settings have different needs for change. For example, organisations in industries or societies that are undergoing fundamental changes may require a complete revolutionary transformation, a change programme that is broad in scope, necessitating sharp changes to most if not all of its procedures. In an extreme form, where an organisation is facing collapse, its turnaround would necessitate revolutionary change – a complete rethinking of the nature of the business, its purpose (see Chapter 1), how it competes, and radical and immediate surgery for survival.⁹ For instance, top management will be highly directive and focus intensively on cash management and short-term actions to reverse losses. These may include disposals, laying off staff and cutting back on investments with long-term payback. In this crisis situation, the strategic horizon is measured in months and as a style of change it might be described as “Dictatorial Transformation” (see Figure 10.5). However, if there is more time available and the organisation in question is in more robust health, top management can be more consultative or even collaborative in identifying how the organisation should evolve. This type of change will require strong visionary management to win over interest groups and might be described as “Charismatic Transformation” (see Figure 10.5). In a calmer setting or a more conservative industry, evolutionary transformation, with some fine-tuning to just a few aspects of the organisation’s activities, will be more appropriate. This may still take the form of imposed change, with a very directive management style, and is termed “Forced Evolution”. With a much longer strategic horizon, far more time can be spent figuring out what to do and negotiating outcomes. This style is termed “Participative Evolution” and depends upon building consensus between varied stakeholders. Figure 10.5 provides a useful means of characterising different change needs and then thinking through the sort of management approaches and programmes required to satisfy those needs.¹⁰

There are four main styles of change:

1. Participative evolution is appropriate when the organisation is either “in fit” with its environment, or it is “out of fit” but time is available, and key interest groups favour change.
2. Charismatic transformation, led by a popular change agent, is appropriate when the organisation is out of fit, the need to change is urgent and key interest groups or stakeholders support substantial change.
3. Forced evolution, driven by a strong leader, is appropriate when the organisation is either in fit but needs minor adjustments or is out of fit and, although time is available, key stakeholders oppose change.
4. Widespread dictatorial transformation, imposed from above, is appropriate where the organisation is out of fit, time is short and key stakeholders oppose change.

A particular context where there are varying needs for change is post-acquisition integration. The target company has been acquired but will have different degrees of organisational and strategic fit with the acquiring company and varying amounts of time available for change. Duncan Angwin (2000)¹¹ developed a ­contingency framework based on post-acquisition change in UK mergers and acquisitions and suggested four types of post-acquisition integration style which resonate with the framework above. These styles were isolation (which would be forced evolution), subjugation (dictatorial transformation), maintenance (participative evolution) and collaboration (charismatic transformation). (The framework was further extended in 2015¹² – see Chapter 8.) Figure 10.5 can be usefully applied to such situations to indicate appropriate styles of change.

Different cultures can also influence different strategic change styles. For example, American theorists, such as Hamel and Hammer and Champy, have tended to advocate revolution over evolution and strong leaders wiping the slate of the past clean before building things anew to suit current rather than former needs.¹³ On the other hand, Japanese approaches, such as kaizen, have favoured slower evolutionary or incremental improvements and consensus-driven change.¹⁴

Different organisational purposes also affect strategic change styles. So far, we have focused on profit-oriented business with relatively clear objectives and aims – in the Anglo-American context this can be characterised as the pursuit of profit for shareholders. This clarity helps focus during organisational change. However, for not-for-profit organisations with multiple, non-aligned stakeholder pressures, reflecting a diversity of views about the purpose of the organisation (where the customers are not so much the marketplace as the provider of funds), this coherence may not be achievable, raising huge challenges for organisational change. If there is any doubt about the massive complexity and difficulties involved in changing not-for-profit organisations, one only has to look at the agonies of the UK National Health System, the problems of improving state education and the consequences of privatising the national railway system.

Different instigators of strategic change

We tend to associate strategic change initiatives with those at the top of an organisation. While executives and the roles they play do have a large influence on how change is enacted in an organisation, the dextrous manager of strategic change will recognise that change can also be driven by individuals with unique insights at lower levels of the organisation, or by groups or communities rather than individuals.

That “managers shape change” seems an obvious statement. However, different managers manage in different ways, and different organisational situations require different styles of change. The Leavy and Wilson scale (shown in Figure 10.6)¹⁵ is an excellent means of thinking through what type of management locus will best suit the challenge faced.

Perhaps just as often, however, innovative individuals who can see beyond current conventions and practices and create new visions of the future are often the drivers of change. Writers and artists such as James Joyce and Picasso challenged established beliefs and in turn transformed our understanding and appreciation of literature and art. Political figures such as Luther and Gandhi overturned the establishment in similar ways. While it is tempting to think of organisational executives as drivers of change in much the same manner, such figures, in the mould of Richard Branson, for example, are in fact remarkably rare.¹⁶ This is probably inevitable. Corporations themselves have become incredibly analytical, seeking to mitigate risk by doubting their hunches, passion and gut feelings and employing sophisticated logarithms to plot their course instead.¹⁷ Moreover, the higher up the establishment people are, the less likely they may be to question the very processes that enabled them to get where they currently are. It is important to remember that the likes of Joyce and Gandhi did not employ managerial risk analysis techniques and were nowhere near the top of their fields or societies when they began their transformational quests.

The same is true in business organisations. Often the people with the most innovative ideas, the ones that could really shake up or change an organisation for the better, are not those who have been in senior management positions for a decade or more. For example, it is doubtful that any of 3M’s senior executives would have developed Post-It Notes. Sometimes the best ideas for new products and processes that go on to define an organisation’s future come from research scientists, shop-floor workers, designers or lower-level managers. However, what 3M executives did do was create an environment in which people from all over the organisation had the confidence and systems in place to enable them to contribute innovative ideas that could drive change in the organisation (for more on setting appropriate conditions for innovation see Chapter 8, New Ventures).

Creating an environment where bodies other than executives can drive change is also important when it comes to unleashing the change potential of communities of practice – those informal networks of people that share a common interest. Communities of practice can be powerful drivers of change because they can solve complex problems quickly; they facilitate the transfer of new practices; they continuously develop professional skills and the knowledge base of the organisation; they can help attract and retain new people. The best communities of practice tend to form naturally, but skilful managers can also encourage their emergence. However they come into being, it is crucial that they are supported by an adequate infrastructure. Because they tend to lack the legitimacy and budgets of more formal groups, communities of practice can be vulnerable without this kind of support.

Barriers to strategic change

You might like to refer back to Chapter 5 where the “the cultural web” developed by Johnson, Whittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regner (2017) is discussed (see Figure 5.4). One of the strengths of this model is that through identifying the culture and paradigm of an organisation, barriers to change can be surfaced. For instance, certain routines may be very difficult to alter. This can be illustrated by considering the difficulties you might have in trying to do a very familiar task in a different way. For instance, try changing the hand you write with, driving on a different side of the road (in a different country), reversing your cutlery when eating, or playing tennis or cricket with the opposite hand. Normally one experiences an immediate decline in performance before any benefit is apparent and so change is discouraged – you would really prefer to go back to what you were doing before (see Angwin and Urs (2014) for an example of changing routines during an acquisition). There can also be psychological barriers based on how you see the world. We often don’t question these core understandings that are reflected in the paradigm (see the cultural web), but they have a very powerful influence on how we perceive opportunities and threats or strengths and weaknesses for instance.

In our opening example, we wondered why Kodak suffered a catastrophic decline when its direct competitor Fujifilm survived and prospered. One explanation is that they were wedded to the importance of photo film as this is what they were successful at and it had generated vast revenues for them over a long period of time. An influential book, Thinking Fast and Slow (2011), by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, identifies a range of cognitive biases that distort our perceptions of the world. For Kodak, there were a number of these biases at work, including the “sunk cost fallacy” that legitimated continuing to invest in photo film when the world was rapidly moving away from this product. The reason was that the whole company had invested heavily in the area for decades and did not want to see this investment written off. Cognitive biases and psychology are now recognised as important determinants of managerial decisions and these have led to the rise of Behavioural Strategy. Psychologically, employees would also have had loyalty to the way things were done and what Kodak stood for, which would have been reinforced by the symbols, rituals and stories of the organisation. Also, politically, the power structures would have inhibited change as people’s careers had been built upon the photo-film industry and to entertain a new departure in the activities of Kodak would have opened the door to different power bases and new influential executives. Top executive power would have been reinforced by the organisation’s structures and control systems. Arguably, Kodak also suffered from an out-of-date mentality, that its “razor blade” business model (see Chapter 6) did not work for digital cameras, and that making perfect products was no longer the way forward when the new high-tech mantra was “make it, launch it, fix it”. With a high degree of conservatism in the organisation, that some labelled complacency, there was probably fear of the unknown, of getting involved in something unfamiliar that could have negative consequences to reputation and pride. Linked to this inertia in the organisation was the fact that it was physically headquartered in, and dominated, the city of Rochester, USA, where very little criticism was heard. For these reasons, Kodak would not recognise the threat of digital photography for a long time, or really invest in it with enthusiasm, even when their own company had developed the technology! In a company such as Kodak, with strong barriers to change, how can resistance be managed?

Managing different forms of resistance to strategic change

One of Machiavelli’s most often quoted lines gets to the nub of why many well-planned change initiatives fail: “The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old order and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new.” Many change initiatives do not gain traction due to failing to anticipate and manage such individual and organisational resistance that Machiavelli’s quotation suggests is inevitable.

Most of these failures are due to insufficient communication and thus uncertainty about what change is coming, why it is coming and what the implications of the change will be for people (see Angwin et al. 2016 for an example). Kotter and Schlesinger’s table articulates different communication strategies that can be used to work through normal forms of ­barriers to change, where they should be used, and their relative advantages and disadvantages (see Figure 10.7).¹⁸

Leading change from “the middle”

The Strategic Leadership Keypad, outlined in the book Creative Strategy, can be a useful guide in this regard (Figure 10.8). Here the authors argue that, with an increase in the value and power of the engaged “knowledge worker”, leaders of strategic change need to become less “command and control” oriented and be more facilitators, enablers, mentors and coaches. Whereas traditional business, government and military models would see the leader at the top, and the previous chapter made a case for strategy and change emerging from the “bottom up”, Creative Strategy argues that the strategic leadership of change should be positioned at the middle, or in the centre of things, providing a hub for the creative band of brains and networks to latch on to: a gravity that connects and respects the diversity and dynamism necessary for change while ensuring that things don’t spin out in conflicting orbits.

Around this middle, the Keypad distils four key elements for effectively leading continuity and change: linking, sussing, promoting and mapping. Successful leaders of change should be able to “toggle” between the four keys, between inside and outside, past, present and future, between emergence and top-down leadership.

The first key, active or interactive linking with the external environment, means defining who the key external stakeholders are, and being a lynchpin that helps to connect them to key internal stakeholders (see Chapter 1). It also often means being the public face of the organisation, explaining it, promoting it and if necessary defending it. Taking these roles frees the creative minds within to get on with creating value. A. G. Lafley enabled strategic change at Procter & Gamble by clearly defining the key stakeholders that employees and team members respectively should have in mind: customers. He saw P&G’s most meaningful results come from two critical points of contact with the outside: first, when customers choose to buy a P&G product over others and, second, when they use the product at home. Subsequently, Lafley came to see the importance of innovations being born not only in the lab: they should be driven by consumers, or, more accurately, from the interaction between P&G employees and consumers. Hence, almost every P&G office and innovation centre now has customers working inside with employees.¹⁹

Second, strategic leaders must be able to step back and envision, or suss, the essence of the organisation: to distil and embody or exude the organisation’s strategic identity. To make the strategy simple and tangible so that people don’t have to spend time wondering whether a new creative idea, development or interpretation can be made to fit, add to or recalibrate the organisation’s strategy – they just know if it doesn’t and get on with it if it does. One of the “signature moves” of Bill Campbell (the guiding force behind many of Silicon Valley’s most creative companies: from Apple to Google to Jasper Wireless) is convincing CEOs to remove, or move aside, a CFO that has become lodged in the centre of things thereby distancing a CEO from the ability to keep their finger on the pulse and thus their ability to know and communicate “the suss” on what their companies are about.

Third, strategic leaders understand the value of stepping in to find and promote good “waves” (emerging ideas, values or people) from “lower echelons” quickly up through the organisation. They know that higher-level employees do not have a monopoly on good ideas, that game-changing practices are likely to come from those not yet inculcated, and that just the sense that good ideas will come from everywhere in the organisation keeps people higher up on their toes and motivates those further down. The Post-It Note example described earlier is a good example of leading change through promotion; as is Billy Beane’s promotion of scramblers and “uglies” at the Oakland A’s, described in the Live Case (10–4) ­further on in this chapter.

Fourth, strategic leaders must be able to externalise a vision: so as to map the path ahead or provide a picture of where the organisation is heading. This need not be accurate. Things change. The purpose is rather to give confidence about what good movement will look like and lead to, and that momentum will be maintained – even if things don’t emerge as planned. Movement and momentum motivate creative people and make them more ready and able to adjust and change in any event.

These four leadership approaches to getting to the middle (or heart) of an organisation can be informed by systems thinking and strategic stories. These can be supported effectively by Strategy Directors.²⁰

Systems thinking

From the above it is evident that “connectedness” is crucial to how organisations work, and change, effectively. Peter Senge, perhaps the most influential systems thinker to affect how we look at strategy, put this more formally in his book The Fifth Discipline.²¹ Senge identified five interrelated “disciplines” required to build a learning organisation: (1) personal visions; (2) surfacing the often implicit models currently used for decision-making; (3) developing a shared vision; (4) team learning; and finally (5) the fifth discipline: systems thinking to understand how the relationships and interactions between the elements of the organisation and the environment affect the whole. This systems thinking applied to the leadership of strategic change should entail the following considerations:

1. Seeing interrelationships and processes rather than things and snapshots
2. Recognising that individual “cogs” are not to blame for poor performance – they can only do what the system allows them to do
3. Distinguishing which parts of the system have high impact on strategy and which are only minor details
4. Paying attention to (3) and focusing on areas of “high leverage” – the 20% of things that will make 80% of difference (sometimes this is referred to as the 80/20 rule)
5. Looking beyond solving symptoms and outcomes through popular quick fixes or applying generic buzzwords – poorly performing systems require systematic solutions.

The power of strategic stories

Human beings can learn by accommodation through two practical means: through being changed by personal experience, or through encountering other people who communicate stories encapsulating other experiences. Given the inherent limitations of personal experience, stories are invaluable for the learning organisation. In the words of Annette Simmons: “When you tell a compelling story, you connect people to you or what you are trying to achieve.” While stories have for some time played a role in conveying complex marketing messages to customers (e.g. the identities of Unilever’s main ice cream brands have been organised around the following storylines for many years: Solero – stories of refreshment; Magnum – self-indulgence; Carte d’Or – sharing), they are now playing a part in the way that many companies think about leading strategic development and can be an excellent approach to leading from the middle.

In 1998, “Strategic stories: how 3M is rewriting business planning” was published in the Harvard Business Review.²² It clearly struck a chord, becoming one of the HBR’s best-selling offprints. In the article, 3M ascribed much of its success to the company’s “story-intensive culture” and how this has changed the way it “does strategy”. 3M attributes its new approach to two things. First, a recognition that traditional bullet points and list-making approaches to communicating strategic plans are too generic, leave critical relationships unspecified and subsequently do not inspire thinking or commitment. Second, a recognition that communicating and developing the same ideas through stories enables people to see themselves and their organisational operations in complex, multi-dimensional ways, helping them to explore opportunities for strategic change and form ideas about future success. “When people locate themselves in these strategic stories,” the authors concluded, “their sense of commitment and involvement is enhanced.”

There are more scientific reasons why stories, or conversations about strategic stories, are important for organisations. Psychologists have established that lists are much harder to remember than stories because of “recency” and “primacy” effects. People mainly remember the first and the last items on a list but not the rest of it. Also, lists enable “selective memory” as people tend to select the individual points that they like and focus on those, forgetting about the whole and the many integrated parts that make this up. This is one of the major limitations of bullet points – they miss out how things are linked together – there is no narrative, no story. Language researchers have found that when they translated history textbooks into the story-based style of Time or The Economist, students could recall up to three times more information. Cognitive scientists have examined how the stories we hear in childhood enable us to imagine a course of action, imagine its effects on others, decide whether or not a particular direction should be taken and plan accordingly.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then a story or an anecdote about a company can connect up a thousand threads and give a corporation a flexible focus that can launch a thousand initiatives that both encapsulate and build core values (see Chapter 6). In the words of Gardner and Laskin, authors of Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership: “Stories of identity – narratives that help individuals think about and feel who they are, where they come from, and where they are headed – constitute the single most powerful weapon in the leader’s arsenal.”²³ Tom Peters even has a term for a management style based on this type of thinking: MBSA – “management by storying around”. It is interesting that human beings can communicate and learn an incredibly complex system of meaning through a whole series of convoluted stories, yet be unable to remember a vision statement, code of ethics or list of policy objectives. Maybe this is why societies put so much emphasis on telling stories to children, as they are so powerful in communicating complex meaning and remain embedded in the memory for so long. In a knowledge society, where learning organisations are imperative, many organisations are taking stories seriously. At the time of going to press, a nice example was provided by the Scheaffer company, whose website (www.sheaffer.com/stories/) linked to a number of video clips where customers connected their Sheaffer pens to signature moments in their lives as a way of expressing the company’s strategy of promoting the idea that a “Sheaffer is more than a writing instrument”.

The growing trend towards utilising strategy directors

Duncan Angwin and Sotirios Paroutis have recently argued that Senior Strategy Directors (SSDs),²⁴ sometimes called Chief Strategy Officers (CSOs), fulfil many of the roles necessary in bringing about organisational change by being the ­missing link in connecting up strategy – from the shop floor to the boardroom. They argue that as organisations need to be strategically agile, able to be nimble and flex rapidly, while also making strong choices and resource commitments over the long term, this places increasing strain upon the connectivity of companies internally and across organisational boundaries.

SSDs act to identify tensions and rifts in order to bridge them through translation and brokering skills. They perform a critical role in providing leadership and necessary structural ties, vertically and horizontally, throughout organisations and with external stakeholders, binding different social networks in a dynamic way to facilitate organisational realignment. In order to succeed as an SSD, impressive social skills and strong technical competencies are key to being a credible strategic leader of change to a wide range of audiences. Effective Strategy Directors can provide support to organisational leaders in taking a strategic approach to managing change.

Referring back to the question of why Kodak and Fujifilm had such different outcomes when they were very similar in their earlier success, we can now see that they approached the need to evolve in different ways. While they both had similar information on the impending tsunami of change, and both showed early resistance to any change, Fujifilm had a more coherent approach to leadership, communication and strategic change than Kodak. While in the early stages at Fujifilm the men in the consumer-film business dominated and refused to acknowledge the looming crisis, just like Kodak, Shigetaka Komori showed great leadership skills in taking them on, communicating a new purpose for the organisation, slashing costs and jobs leading to $3.3bn in restructuring costs, cutting managers, researchers and development labs. Komori knew they had to develop a new business model as the gentle decline anticipated in the photo-film market became a free fall, with photo film’s contribution to group profits going from 60% to zero in a decade. Undoing the work of his predecessors was almost unheard of in Japan. Ironically, some have commented that Kodak acted like a change-resistant Japanese company and Fujifilm acted like a flexible American one. Fujifilm developed new routines with its in-house expertise and found new applications for its film technology in cosmetics, medical imaging equipment and in optical screens for LCD flat panel screens. It built on its core competencies, mastered new tactics to survive and had consistent and persistent leadership. Meanwhile, at Kodak, leadership was inconsistent, with a raft of new CEOs lurching from one initiative to another, communicating many different messages over time and spending billions trying to buy ready-made businesses with little in common with Kodak’s core except the belief that they could sell anything. There was little strategic clarity of purpose. Most of the acquisitions did not work out. Fujifilm’s leadership showed consistency of purpose and clarity in communications whereas the Kodak organisation really did not want to change and the leadership was criticised for complacency.

While it would be possible to relate the change approaches of Kodak and Fujifilm to change frameworks outlined in this chapter, it is important to note that change is often not linear, as the n-step models suggest, and that there are likely to be many feedback loops in the process. We show in this chapter that there also needs to be a blend between the actions taken, and to be taken, and the leadership approach that understands the unique setting or context in which the change initiative must work. In addition, in order to get the most from the organisation, communication plays a key role and leadership needs to be able to communicate a clear strategic purpose that can help stakeholders pull in the same direction – so everyone will know how fixity and change may interrelate.

Some suggestions

1. While the effective leadership of change will require an understanding of the particular organisation in question, this case seems to suggest at least one general characteristic in this sector. It seems important to be very cautious about revolutionary change because a luxury brand often relies on a mystique created by its associations and relationships with the past – and this must be preserved at all costs. Often the guardians of these relationships are long-serving staff or suppliers or customers, so they must be treated with care. However, often these organisations have fallen out of fit with the modern business environment, and subsequently on hard times, by not questioning old processes, inherited inefficiencies or outdated production methods. Managing change in this sector appears to require a very dextrous change agent who can effectively blend evolutionary and revolutionary approaches, going through each item of the value chain, asking what should be preserved and what should be changed, and asking if every item does actually contribute to a great enough extent to justify its costs.
2. To begin, Pringle is probably in the revitalisation category. As the case goes on, Pringle moves down the Leavy and Wilson scale toward requiring an increasing emphasis on continuity and a lessening emphasis on change. Correspondingly, Winser combines Revitaliser, Turnarounder, Defender and Inheritor loci.
3. One can quite easily break down Winser’s success using a straightforward change framework like Kotter’s eight steps. Using this we can see that Winser:
   1. Emphasises the urgency of the situation
   2. Works hard to form coalitions (with the existing design team and the new Factory Manager, for example)
   3. Expresses a clear vision, both in word and in deed
   4. Communicates the change with everything she says and does
   5. Sets tough targets and then lets people get on with achieving them
   6. Uses these targets, once achieved (e.g. the fashion shows), as exemplars of short-term wins
   7. Communicates to consolidate these successes
   8. Recognises that the current success is just a start and that there is more change to come.

However, this sort of analysis only tells part of the story. As the ideas for the previous question suggest, managing change in this sector requires a dextrous approach that blends different types of evolutionary and revolutionary methods. In this light, it is interesting to look at how Winser exhibits a number of different change management styles in this case. For example, she exhibits a number of Dunphy and Stace’s four change styles at different phases, and on different issues, when appropriate (as is often the case, new leaders can take advantage of the uncertainty and new opportunities that a change of leadership brings to start out more dictatorial and move toward more participative styles). Consequently, she also uses different strategies to manage resistance.

She seems to focus strongly on the importance of consistency across the operational and strategic levels, and the culture and the strategy of the organisation, to preserve the corporate or brand identity. Moreover, in terms of the strategic leadership keypad, she identifies buyers as the key lynchpin to the outside and seeks to improve relations here while not allowing buyers to customise items and hence dull the key identity that she has sussed (e.g. “Rescuing the heritage of a great British brand”; “We only make beautiful cashmere”).

Her deeds here are backed up by promoting certain pre-existing aspects and stories from below: the Scottish/British heritage; sporting/aristocratic traditions through bringing forward the likes of David Beckham and Madonna; the traditional argyle; the promotion of the new factory manager from the floor; and her clear mapping of a more positive future of building upon the traditional knits and getting to new customers. And Winser seems very adept at focusing on the 20% of the business that will make 80% of the difference in leading change, going forward.

Finally, she acknowledges that the change programme is not over. No matter how successful these early steps have been, they are still first steps on a long onward journey.

Notes

1. 1. Bartlett, C. A. and Ghoshal, S. (1989) Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution, Harvard Business School Press.
2. 2. Kotter, J. P. (1995) Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail, Harvard Business Review, 73(2): 59–67.
3. 3. Identifying a compelling need for change or creating a sense of urgency is seen as crucial by Beer, M. (1987) Revitalizing organizations: Change process and emergent model, Academy of Management Executive, 1(1): 51–6; Johansson, H. J. et al. (1993) Business Process Reengineering: Breakpoint Strategies for Market Dominance, John Wiley and Sons; Tichy, N. (1993) Handbook for Revolutionaries, Doubleday; Nadler, D. and Tushman, M. (1989) Organizational frame bending: Principles for managing reorientation, Academy of Management Executive, 3(3): 194–204; Stace, D. and Dunphy, D. (1994) Beyond the Boundaries: Leading and Recreating the Successful Organization, McGraw-Hill; and a book published by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (1995) entitled Better Change: Best Practices for Transforming your Organization, Irwin. All of these sources and others, like Beck, R. N. (1987) Visions, values, and strategies: Changing attitudes and culture, Academy of Management Executive, 1(1): 33–40, Chen, M. (1994) Sun Tzu's thinking and contemporary business, Business Horizons, 37(2): 42–8, and Larkin, T. J. and Larkin, S. (1996) Reaching and changing frontline employees, Harvard Business Review, 74(3): 95–104, emphasise the need to develop, effectively communicate, and empower others to work toward a vision of a future organisational state. We are reminded of the particular importance of being aware of the politics at work in an organisation, gaining commitment and forming a guiding coalition by PricewaterhouseCoopers (1995), Johansson et al. (1993), Tichy, N. and Sherman, S. (1993) Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, Doubleday, and Nadler and Tushman (1989), while emphasising short-term wins and consolidating improvements, integrating and institutionalising new approaches, and forming a platform for further change are highlighted by reengineering exponents and most of the above.
4. 4. Smither, R. D. (1994) The Psychology of Work and Human Performance, HarperCollins.
5. 5. Cummings, S. (2002) Recreating Strategy, Sage. Original sources: Lewin, K. (1951) Field Theory in Social Sciences, Tavistock Publications; Blake, R. R. and Mouton, J. S. (1964) How to Assess the Strengths and Weaknesses of a Business Enterprise, Scientific Methods; Lippitt, R., Watson, J. and Westley, B. (1958) The Dynamics of Planned Change: A Comparative Study of Principles and Techniques, Harcourt, Brace; Tichy, N. and Devanna, M. A. (1997) The Transformational Leader, John Wiley and Sons.
6. 6. Pettigrew, A. and Whipp, R. (1991) Managing Change for Competitive Success, Blackwell.
7. 7. Mintzberg, H. and Westley, Y. (1992) Cycles of organizational change, Strategic Management Journal, 13, Special Issue: 39–59.
8. 8. Wilson, D. (1992) A Strategy of Change: Concepts and Controversies in the Management of Change, ITP.
9. 9. Key works on turnarounds include Lovett, D. and Slatter, S. (1999) Corporate Turnaround, Penguin Books; Barker, V. L. and Duhaime, I. M. (1997) Strategic change in the turnaround process: Theory and empirical evidence, Strategic Management Journal, 18(1): 13–38; Grinyer, P., Mayes, D. G. and McKiernan, P. (1990) The Sharp-benders: Achieving a sustained improvement in performance, Long Range Planning, 23(1): 116–25.
10. 10. Dunphy, D. and Stace, D. A. (1990) Under New Management: Australian Organizations in Transition, McGraw-Hill.
11. 11. Angwin, D. N. (2000) Implementing Successful Post-acquisition Management. Financial Times/Prentice Hall.
12. 12. Angwin, D. N. and Meadows, M. (2015) New integration strategies for post acquisition management, Long Range Planning, 48(4): 235–51.
13. 13. Hamel, G. (1996) Strategy as revolution, Harvard Business Review, 74(4): 69–82; Hammer, M. and Champy, J. (1993) Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution, Nicholas Brealey.
14. 14. Imai, M. (1986) Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success, McGraw-Hill.
15. 15. Leavy, B. and Wilson, D. (1994) Strategy and Leadership, ITP.
16. 16. As Jim March reminds us: “most current leaders seem to be competent and analytical rather than imaginative and visionary … they seek to refine the establishment rather than challenge or transform it.” March, J. (1999) The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence, Blackwell.
17. 17. Bonabeau, E. (2004) The perils of the information age, Harvard Business Review, 82(6): 45–54.
18. 18. Kotter, J. P. and Schlesinger, L. A. (1979) Choosing strategies for change, Harvard Business Review, 57(2): 106–14.
19. 19. Lafley, A. G. (2009) What only the CEO can do, Harvard Business Review, 87(5): 54–62.
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25. 25. In the UK, certain historic buildings have “listed” status which protects them from development, renovation or demolition. The lower the status number the higher the degree of protection, so Grade I listing means it is exceptionally difficult to get permission to make changes to the structure.