The actors of the various companies persistently disagreed due to cultural differences in mindset, whereupon the consultant, recognizing this, changed her strategy. She began meeting with each actor separately and explaining the other's performance from his or her particular cultural assumptions. In this way, once each had understood the other, could both meet together and the mergence actually become effective. In a similar way, says Schein, can change be best implemented when the leader is willing and able to looking into, work with, and attempt to understand other cultural patterns. History is change. Change necessitates working with and understanding the heterogeneity of cultures that constitute the world. A leader who does this becomes flexible to the change dynamic and can best enable his organization to follow suit.
Sun Tzu's Art of War (2001) is a popular treatise used in business school and corporations alike. Managers comparing themselves to generals, and their corporations to the army (and competition to enemy) have used his recommendations in various ways. One of these is the rule of "doing it better" that Sun Tzu insists issues from the element of surprise that comes through change.
Two elements exist in war: expected and unexpected techniques. The latter involve change, are innovative but are simultaneously disturbing, since anything new or original, is by nature, disturbing. Expected innovative techniques insist Sun Tzu, however, give you the element of surprise, inevitably hoisting you in a higher position than your competitor.
Sun Tzu exhorts the general to seek change, to seek innovation. The executive reading this book, exhorts his corporation likewise: Change can be the key to your success, since it keeps your competitor guessing and provides you with an appealing characteristic of innovation.
Woolworth Ltd. overcame its challenges of the 1990s and acquired unprecedented success by focusing on change, insistence on flexibility with times, and emphasis that innovation must be encouraged from lower echelons upwards. (Hollingsworth, 1990). Using a bottoms-up approach, creativity was sought from the lowest level of the hierarchy, and change was emphasized and affirmed.
Sun Tzu speaks about the army and to great purpose since a general has to deal with change on a regular basis. A successful general knows how to live with change and succeeds in having his army adjust to the change. Doing so makes them all the more efficient and triumphant in their struggle.
A great example of just such a general was Marion (Crawford, Smithsonian.com), a little known revolutionary hero, otherwise called 'Swamp Fox' due to his ability in creating and adjusting to change, and leading his subordinates to do likewise. Marion adopted techniques deliberately different to conventional ones, he helped his soldiers adapt to and embrace his introduction of change so that they perceived it as innovative and welcoming, and Marion, consequently, became greatly beloved as one of the extraordinary heroes of the American Revolution.
Marion's rules of war were acquired from the successes and failures of contemporaries of his time. He employed rapid movement and surprise, struck in the early morning, and generated a comradeship with his troops where he habituated them to his strategies of surprise and got them to expect, accept, and embrace the unaccepted.
In fact, the element of surprise and the manner in which Marion used change to his advantage gained Marion his nickname. In 1780, a British Lieutenant Marion's troops for seven hours, and finally gave up cursing, "as for this damned old fox, the Devil himself, could not a tribute to his embrace of, and subsequent benefiting from the element of change.
The Four Stages of Change
The leader may be in charge of and harnessing the change, but, as recent analysis shows, attempts and phenomena of 'unfreezing' actually start earlier than was previously thought (Weick & Quinn, 1996) Prochaska and colleagues, for instance, proposed that people at both a micro and macro level when exposed to change the situation are at one of the four stages: precontemplation, contemplation, action, and maintenance. Precontemplators are still in the torpid stage when all seems well and they are unaware of the need to change. Contemplators -- level number two -- are aware that there is a problem, are thinking about change, but still loathe accepting it and disinclined from making or embracing that change. Action -- which most see as the change stage itself - represents that stage in which people accept and go along with the change in some way or other, whilst with maintenance, the participants involved (or on a macro...
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now