An unrecognized affliction is striking certain gifted performers at the top of their game. Its cause, paradoxically, is success itself. These stars, who thrive on conquering new challenges, can lose their bearings and question their purpose once a job has been mastered. A vague dissatisfaction gives way to confusion and then to inner turmoil. Left unattended, this summit syndrome can derail promising careers. The syndrome has three phases. In the approach phase, when most of the challenges of a current job have been met, sufferers tend to push harder in a vain attempt to recapture the adrenaline rush of the climb. Then, in the plateauing phase, when virtually all the challenges have been conquered, these individuals, who are incapable of coasting, bear down to try to produce ever more stellar results, but to less effect and greater dissatisfaction. This leads to the terminal descending phase, when performance slips noticeably. As their superstar status fades, they jump ship, accept demotions, or take lateral transfers. It's a terrible waste, for if the syndrome is recognized, steps can be taken before performance slips to dispel the confusion and set the stage for productive growth to the next assignment. There are four parts to this process: First, understand your "winning formula"--the characteristic way you approach a situation--and the vital part it plays in feeling stale or losing your edge. Second, reconnect with your core purpose in life. Third, recast your current, or future, job to better align your inner aspirations with the external requirements of your work. And fourth, create a developmental path by honing a handful of core leadership competencies. None of this is easy, but for talented individuals--and the organizations that rely on them--the vaccine of preventive awareness is far better than gambling on an after-the-fact cure once the crisis is full-blown.
Organizational change has traditionally come about through top-down initiatives such as hiring experts or importing best-of-breed practices. Such methods usually result in companywide rollouts of templates that do little to get people excited. But within every organization, there are a few individuals who find unique ways to look at problems that seem impossible to solve. Although these change agents start out with the same tools and access to resources as their peers, they are able to see solutions where others do not. These positive deviants are the key, the authors believe, to a better way of creating organizational change. Your company can make the most of their methods by following six steps: Make the group the guru--the members of the community are engaged in the process of their own evolution. Reframe through facts, which entails restating the problem in a way that opens minds to new possibilities. Make it safe to learn, creating an environment that supports innovative ideas. Make the problem concrete; the community combats abstraction by stating uncomfortable truths. Leverage social proof; here the community looks to the larger society for examples of solutions that have worked in parallel situations. Finally, confound the immune defense response; solutions are introduced organically from within the group in a way that promotes acceptance. Throughout the steps, the leader must adopt a facilitatory role. The positive-deviance approach has unearthed solutions to such complicated and diverse problems as malnutrition in Mali and human trafficking in East Java. This methodology can help solve even the most extreme dilemmas.
Companies achieve real agility only when every function and process--when every person--is able and eager to rise to every challenge. This type and degree of fundamental change, commonly called revitalization or transformation, is what many companies seek but rarely achieve because they have never before identified the factors that produce sustained transformational change. The authors identify three interventions that will restore companies to vital agility and then keep them in good health: incorporating employees fully into the principal business challenges facing the company; leading the organization in a different way in order to sharpen and maintain incorporation and constructive stress; and instilling mental disciplines that will make people behave differently and then help them sustain their new behavior. The authors discovered these basic sources of revitalization by tracking the change efforts of Sears, Roebuck and Co., Royal Dutch Shell, and the United States Army. This article is one of the first practical revitalization guides to appear anywhere, and it is based not on theory but on actual experience.
Perhaps no other article published in the management literature has had the impact of Richard Pascale's piece on the "Honda Effect" that was published in the Spring 1984 issue of the California Management Review. This now classic article has stimulated considerable debate over the role and value of corporate strategy in business decision making--which is the subject of this forum. This special collection of essays includes an abridged version of Pascale's original article ("Perspectives on Strategy: The Real Story Behind Honda's Success"), an exchange of correspondence between Henry Mintzberg and Michael Goold, and new essays by Richard Rumlet, Michael Goold, and Richard Pascale, who revisits his own original article as well as this whole debate.
Reinvention is not changing what is, but creating what isn't. When British Airways declared itself the world's favorite airline, it faced the challenge of becoming a different company, not just a better one. When Europcar decided to become the most efficient rental-car company in Europe and Haagen-Dazs chose to make a visit to its European shops an exciting event, they didn't just need to focus on doing things to improve their competitiveness. When a company sets out to reinvent itself, it must uncover and then alter the invisible assumptions and premises on which its decisions and actions are based. This organizational context is the sum of the past and dictates what is possible for the future. When managers reinvent themselves and their companies, they create a new context that leads everyone to embrace a seemingly impossible future. Reinvention includes assembling a critical mass of stakeholders to do an organizational audit, create urgency, harness contention, and engineer breakdowns that reveal weak spots.
In 1980 Ford was near disaster. The company lost billions of dollars between 1980 and 1982. By 1988 the company had been transformed into one of the most successful corporations in the United States. Describes what happened and then examines how it happened. The major objective is to look at major change in a huge organization and the way the change was made.
The term "socialization" usually evokes a strong emotional response and is often misunderstood. While it does seem to go against our culturally-ingrained "individualism," a certain degree of carefully-thought-out socialization does make organizations work better--as evidenced by the success of strongly socialized firms. This article examines the "seven steps of socialization" and provides a method for rating a firm's corporate culture.
Describes the history of Honda Motor Company from its beginning through its entry into and subsequent dominance of the U.S. market. The history is explained primarily in terms of strategic factors and quoted from two sources: an earlier case and Boston Consulting Group report on the motorcycle industry. Should be used with Honda (B).
Describes the history of Honda Motor Company from its beginning through its entry into and subsequent dominance of the U.S. market as seen through the eyes of Honda executives. The history of Honda's successful entry into the U.S. market is viewed as highly adaptive and fraught with error and serendipity. Honda (A) and (B) are designed to be used together to contrast two differing views of major events in a company's history, both of which are important for a general manager to understand.
An in-depth study of Japanese-managed companies in the United States and Japan reveals that when technology and governmental factors are equal, the Japanese companies' U.S. subsidiaries do not outperform their American counterparts. Also, contrary to conventional belief, American managers use a participative decision-making style as often as Japanese managers do. Japanese executives use ambiguity as a managerial tool. Ambiguity is a useful concept in thinking about how individuals relate to each other, orally and in writing. It provides a way of legitimizing the loose rein that a manager permits in certain organizational situations. McKinsey Award Winner.