Week 6: Assignment #3 –Leadership and Change
Date: February 18, 2013
By: Bill Doncsecz
For: Professor Perkins
Class: Developing Personal Leadership
Leadership and Change
Change, according to the dictionary, means to transform or convert something. Likewise, organization is that which is arranged by systematic planning and a united effort. Not surprisingly then, any attempt to transform something arranged by systematic planning sounds risky, and it is. Sounds like an effort like organizational change then should only be performed with the guidance of excellent leadership. A leader will want to understand the undertaking thoroughly, and as Kurt Lewin said, “if you really want to understand something, try to change it.”
Leaders may approach organizational change via one of two major methods, rationally or emotionally. The rational approach, also the one I’d be most comfortable employing, favors analytics, shrewd planning and good management skills. The emotional approach favors leadership skills, and highlights the leader-follower relationships, and is usually employed during the presence of some crisis.
As a software engineer by profession, one of the topics I found very interesting was the use of Michael Beer’s equation to assess and relate the amount of change needed to exceed the resistance to change. The utilization of an algebraic-like (inequality) equation to understand organizational change is something I would not have thought about. It is also noteworthy to me, that leaders intent on changing the status quo may need to take action to decrease employee satisfaction (or increase dissatisfaction, as it were), in order for the amount of change product to exceed the resistance factor for the equation to work in the leader’s favor. It feels to me, that there is probably an ethical discussion that should take place on that though, i.e., a purposeful intent to lower employee satisfaction levels sounds wrong. Hopefully, another alternative...
