Change leaders: Creating resilience in uncertain times

✍ Scribed by Kathleen Allen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Weight: 106 KB
• Volume: 2012
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1087-8149
• DOI: 10.1002/ltl.20004

✦ Synopsis

LeaderS: CreatING reSILIeNCe IN UNCertaIN tIMeS i 'm not sure I completely understood what I was facing three years ago when I cleared security and was escorted to my first meeting with management. I was about to enter the world of top secret projects where the government was the primary customer. I had been asked to take on the task of helping the Ceo of a large engineering firm bring more entrepreneurial thinking to the company as it began to explore new opportunities in the commercial world in an effort to offset the downturn in government contracts. Having worked with scientists and engineers for many years, helping them successfully bring their new technologies to market, I was optimistic that I could do the same thing inside this company.

It was 2008, and the financial crisis was going full throttle, yet there was no sense at the time that we were seeing the end of a relatively stable and predictable business cycle. For decades, business leaders had been able to do five-year strategic planning and be assured that in those five years nothing would deviate from what had been predicted to the detriment of the company. I had no idea at the time that my real contribution would not be the number of technologies we commercialized but rather the way the company managed to get on a path to becoming a resilient organization capable of withstanding and proactively dealing with uncertainty.

My experience over three years as the "entrepreneur-in-residence" at the company has given me a new perspective on leadership in times of uncertainty. the approach presented