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| Transforming the Clunky Organization: Pragmatic Leadership Skills for Breaking Inertia
ISBN: 9781501710049
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Cornell University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Organizational change; Organizational effectiveness; Leadership; Executive ability; Organizational behavior;
Bacharach (The Agenda Mover), a professor of labor-management relations at Cornell University, offers a no-nonsense, straightforward approach to surmounting what he sees as the primary organizational challenge for business leaders, namely inertia. This condition can have two sources: the "clunky tendency," when companies are disorganized, and the "myopic tendency," when organizations are organized in outmoded ways. The result of both these problems is that a business isn't able to deliver goods or services as flexibly and capably as in the past. In response, he contends, leaders must address five questions, including why the organization is sluggish, what other options exist, what can be done, what support is needed, and how should the chosen solution be implemented. Bacharach's advice centers on the complementary processes of "robust discovery," a period of openness to new ideas, and "focused delivery," the methodical execution of the chosen idea. With both processes, he stresses the importance of reading "signals" from the market, citing as a successful example PepsiCo's diversifying its product line into "fun for you," "good for you," and "better for you" categories in response to greater consumer concern with health. Through this and other useful, real-world examples, this work offers well-thought-out methods for transforming struggling businesses. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Samuel B. Bacharach, the McKelvey-Grant Professor at Cornell University, is the cofounder of the Bacharach Leadership Group, providing the skills of pragmatic leadership to numerous organizations. He is the author or editor of more than twenty academic books, more than one hundred articles, and a number of popular practitioner-oriented books, including The Agenda Mover . His leadership training material has been used by such corporations as Cisco, SunGard, PepsiAmericas, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Citigroup, Chubb, and Gap, as well as Cornell University, Lehigh University, and the University of Virginia. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of pragmatic leadership and a regular columnist for Inc . |
