Insights · 14 February 2013
Leading change
A short comment on a debate about whether public-sector leaders should go to military academy — based on what I have learnt over 20 years about changing both people and the organisations they are part of.
There is a significant difference between going to military academy and actually taking part in a war. Partly because military academies, to a relatively large extent, train people in the management side and less in leading others than the group you yourself belong to. Officer cadets are fairly compliant and motivated.
Management and leadership are not the same
Kotter put it sharply: no one has yet figured out how to manage people effectively into battle; they must be led. Management is about being able to act under complex conditions and create order. Leadership is about being able to handle change — in other words, disorder.
Combine that insight with the literature on strategy implementation and you have a rather good description of where the problem lies in many organisations: there is enough control, but too little leadership of the change itself.
Resistance is chemistry, not malice
Age-old natural forces in us humans mean that organisms exposed to attempts at instability automatically strive towards a new equilibrium — in other words, they counteract the influence. Knowledge of those mechanisms can make change work somewhat easier. But never easy.
That is why we design change programmes so that resistance is anticipated from the outset: it becomes a working condition you plan for, instead of a surprise you get angry about.
Written by Mads Cronquist. Originally published in Danish on cronquist.dk (14 February 2013) under the title “Ledelse af forandringer” — here in an edited English version.