Issues & observations: Leading yourself through change

✍ Scribed by Robert A. Goldberg

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Weight: 41 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1093-6092
• DOI: 10.1002/lia.1128

✦ Synopsis

D oes leading your organiza- tion through change have to feel like trudging through a swamp of molasses? We all say we want more collaboration, faster decisions, and more focus on customers than on internal politics. Yet it can be exasperating to see managers and employees desperately clinging to the way they have always done things, even as they nod in agreement about how things need to change.

What most leaders fail to recognize is that trying to change their organizations without first changing themselves simply doesn't work. To enable change beyond superficial window dressing, leaders must look at what they themselves are doing that keeps the organization stuck in the status quo. The enemy of change is often the fact that leaders do not look in the mirror. What they need is the courage to look.