Stories
Stories
Books
The Heart of Change by John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen
Searching for a Corporate Savior by Rakesh Khurana
Making Markets: How Firms Can Design and Profit from Online Auctions and Exchanges by Ajit Kambil and Eric Van Heck
Leading Terms: Setting the Stage for Great Peformances by J. Richard Hackman
The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business by Thomas H. Davenport and John C. Beck
Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas
Value Sweep: Mapping Corporate Growth Opportunities by Martha Amram
The Heart of Change
by John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen
(Harvard
Business School Press)
Were it not for the years HBS assistant professor Rakesh Khurana spent
In The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations, retired HBS professor John Kotter provides a powerful follow-up to his 1996 international bestseller, Leading Change. This time around, Kotter and coauthor Dan Cohen of Deloitte Consulting bring to life the principles of successful change with stories culled from hundreds of interviews with people from organizations worldwide.
The chief new insight gleaned from that research and stressed in this book is the consistency with which real change is generated by engaging people's emotions, not their intellect, to alter behavior. Emotions such as fear and anger typically present obstacles to change, and replacing them with hope and optimism is often a key to success. The authors assert that PowerPoint presentations and spreadsheets are not at the core of the issue. What works, suggest Kotter and Cohen, is getting people to “see-feel-change” as opposed to “analyze-think-change.” Leaders, they say, must provide experiences that are compelling, that touch hearts, and that are far from the norm in most organizations today.
The authors take their own advice and deliver this message with vivid images of innovative, real-life change in action. A broad range of stories drawn from the military and government organizations in addition to businesses illustrate the eight steps of successful change previously identified in Kotter's Leading Change. (An introductory chapter offers enough background for those unfamiliar with the earlier work to appreciate the instructive and often inspiring anecdotes.)
For example, a story illustrating Kotter's first step — “establishing a sense of urgency” — is told by a middle manager who sought to spur change in his company's purchasing process by highlighting its inefficiencies.The manager hired a summer intern to catalogue all the types of gloves being used in the company's factories. Results showed that 424 different gloves were being purchased, with each factory having its own suppliers and price points. While this revelation was itself startling, the manager maximized its impact by inviting the company's division presidents into a boardroom where samples of all 424 gloves were spread across the table, each tagged to show the price paid and factory of origin. Confronted with an unforgettable image of redundancy and waste, division heads were immediately convinced that the purchasing system needed an overhaul.
Many such successes — and pitfalls — in the change process are described in the book's 34 stories. A recap by the authors follows each account, noting the important principles it illustrates. Exercises are also included to spur creative thinking. The Heart of Change is a helpful package of fresh ideas for those looking to break new ground in their organizations.
Searching for a Corporate Savior
by Rakesh Khurana
(Princeton
University Press)
Were it not for the years HBS assistant professor Rakesh Khurana spent researching this book, he would be in danger of being called an opportunist. The questions he raises about CEO succession in Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs seem extraordinarily timely given the recent revelations of questionable conduct by corporate leaders. The scandals naturally produce an anxious curiosity about how such leaders obtained power in the first place.
In 1996, Khurana began analyzing a database of CEO successions from 1978 to 1996 at 850 of the largest U.S. companies. He expected to identify typical economic principles at work in the CEO labor market, but as anomalies in his statistics multiplied, he dug deeper, spending dozens of hours interviewing and observing corporate directors and search consultants engaged in CEO selection. He found what he argues is a “market” in name only, operating more on social than economic principles.
For example, when a company is perceived to be underperforming and its corporate directors, under pressure, dismiss a CEO, Khurana found they spend little time identifying the reasons for underperformance. Such scrutiny would presumably help establish qualifications for a new leader. Instead, Khurana discovered, the candidate list, assembled primarily by board members, is implicitly limited to current CEOs of successful corporations, individuals perceived to be of equal or higher status of the departed CEO.
Without skill-based criteria, and with minimal information due to the cloak-and-dagger secrecy necessary when interviewing high-profile, employed candidates amid press scrutiny, the search committee tends to base its selection on the highly subjective quality of “charisma,” which is often equated with leadership ability. The newly annointed CEO is the able to wield great leverage in negotiating terms of employment, a situation that contributes to burgeoning CEO com-pensation. This leverage can also lead to reduced accountability, since the chairman's title or the power to appoint board members may be offered as further enticements.
Khurana presents his provocative findings effectively, blending conceptual illustrations from sociology and economics with revealing quotes from insiders. In the end, he exhorts stakeholders in corporate boardrooms, academia, and the business press to examine their roles in sustaining or promoting worrisome flaws in the process corporations use to fill their top office.
HBS Press Books in Brief
As the recent failures of prominent B2B markets have shown, the transition of markets
from place to space doesn't always occur smoothly. In Making Markets: How
Firms Can Design and Profit from Online Auctions and Exchanges, Ajit Kambil and
Eric van Heck show how companies can use electronic markets strategically and make
them work.
In Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances, J. Richard Hackman
uses examples ranging from orchestras to airline cockpit crews to prove that
it's not a leader's management style that determines performance, but how
well a leader designs and supports a team so that its members can manage themselves.
The new scarcest resource isn't ideas or talent, but attention itself. Thomas H.
Davenport and John C. Beck's The Attention Economy: Understanding the New
Currency of Business argues that today's businesses are headed for disaster
— unless they overcome the dangerously high attention deficits that threaten to
cripple today's workplace.
Who is likely to become a leader — and why? Legendary leadership expert Warren
G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas's Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values, and
Defining Moments Shape Leaders studies today's young leaders and those of
the World War II generation and reveals the powerful process through which leaders of
any era emerge.
In Value Sweep: Mapping Corporate Growth Opportunities, valuation and strategy
expert Martha Amram proposes a simple and transparent valuation method that helps
managers quantify the value of their company's growth initiatives and align
internal valuations with those of the financial markets. Amram takes readers beyond
the numbers, providing a new lens for valuing growth in mature and developing
businesses.
To order HBS Press books, call 888-500-1016 or visit www.HBSPress.org.
Other books by HBS authors are available at the Business School Coop (617-499-3248; 617-547-5003 fax).
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