Chapter 16: Leadership and strategic change Flashcards
What is central to strategic change?
A key task of leadership is strategic change. Leaders need to address two issues in considering their approach to change:
1. understand the organizational context
(the extent to which it is receptive or resistant to change; blocking or facilitating change)
2. Identify the type of strategic change required
like digital transformation, sustainability transformation and turnaround
Identifying these two help leaders select the appropriate levers for change (levers ranging from symboling management to political action).
What are the different strategic leadership roles?
Top managers, middle managers and entrepreneurial leaders.
What are the role of the top managers?
Top managers
There are three key roles for top managers, especially CEOs.
- envisioning future strategy
- aligning the organization to deliver that strategy —> involves ensuring that people in the organisation are committed to the strategy, motivated enough to make the changed needed and empowered to do so.
- embodying change —> a strategic leader will be seen by internal and external stakeholders as intimately associated with a strategic change program
What is the role of middle managers?
A top-down approach to managing strategy and strategic change sees middle managers as mere implementers of top managements strategic plans. Their roles is to ensure that resources are allocated and controlled appropriately and to monitor the performance and behavior of staff.
Their roles include:
- champions of strategic issues → middle managers are often the closest to market or technological shifts that might signal the need for strategic change. Also well placed to identify blockades to change. They must often ‘sell’ strategic issues to top management, getting their ok in pushing the strategy forward.
- sense makers of strategy → top management may set a strategic direction, but how it is explained and made sense of in specific context may effectively be left to middle managers. They are crucial relevance bridge between top management and members of the organisation at lower levels.
- adapters to unfolding events → middle managers are uniquely qualified to reinterpret and adjust strategy because they have day-to-day responsibility for implementation at a local or department level.
reinterpretation and adjustment of strategic responses and relationships as events unfold.
local leadership of change aligning and embodying change at the local level
What is the role of entrepreneurial leaders?
Entrepreneurial leaders
entrepreneurship can be shown in established organisations and indeed at different levels of large organisations. Similarly, entrepreneurs leading new organisations have to perform many of the roles of managers in established organizations; visioning and embodying change.
When creating new enterprises, there are three roles that are likely to be particularly important:
- opportunity spotters
- resource marshallers
- risk takers
What are the different leadership styles?
.2.1 Transformational (charismatic)
emphasize soft levers for change such as building a vision for their organisation.
highly charismatic and personally inspiring. soft measures, similar to soft implementation.
likely to invest in creating a sense of mission and energizing people to achieve it.
evidence suggests that this approach to leadership is beneficial for peoples motivation and job performance and is particularly positive for wider business performance when organisations face uncertainty
1.2.2 Transactional (hard)
they emphasize hard levers of change such as designing systems and controls. The emphasis here is more likely to be on changes of structures, setting targets to be achieved, financial incentives, careful project management and the monitoring of organisational and individual performance. Divestments and cutbacks may feature strongly. Transactional leadership is more common in established organisations.
Leaders usually combine the two —> situational leadership; encourages the strategic leader to adjust their leadership style to the context they face. There is not just one best way of leading.
What is a forcefield analysis?
A forcefield analysis = compares the forces at work in an organisation acting either to block or to facilitate change. It involves identifying those forces that favor change, those that oppose it and those that are more or less neutral.
Forcefield analysis helps ask some further key questions:
- What aspects of the current situation would block change, and how can these blocks be overcome?
- What aspects of the current situation might facilitate change in the desired direction, and how might these be reinforced?
- What needs to be introduced or developed to add to the forces for change? Here possible additional forces might be informed by McKinsey 7S.
Forcefield analysis is a tool used to understand the dynamics of change within an organization. It identifies and evaluates forces that drive and resist change. The goal is to strengthen driving forces and reduce restraining forces to facilitate successful strategic change.
The process typically involves:
- Identifying the proposed change.
- Listing driving forces that promote the change (e.g., market opportunities, technological advances).
- Listing restraining forces that oppose the change (e.g., organizational culture, lack of resources).
- Evaluating and balancing these forces to understand whether the change is feasible and what adjustments are needed.
It helps strategists pinpoint areas of focus when managing change, aligning with other frameworks you’ve been exploring, like procedural justice or innovation strategies.
What can an forcefield analysis be informed by? (3)
- Stakeholder mapping
- The cultural web
- The 7s-framework
What are two ways to analyze the change context?
The notion of situational leadership shows that leadership should depend on the situation. Therefore we need to analyze the context that the leader is in.
There are two ways to analyze the change context: Forcefield analysis is one way of assessing the readiness of an organization for change and the type of style required. Another is the change kaleidoscope.
What is the change kaleidoscope?
The change kaleidoscope is another framework for assessing the change context. It highlights how contextual features can take various forms supporting or resisting change.
What are the types of strategic change?
Fundamentally there is two:
- incremental change and
- transformational change
and there is two types of transformational change:
- digital transformation
- sustainability transformation
There is also turnaround.
What are the levers for strategic change?
Having identified both the type of change required and the receptiveness of the context, change leaders must choose between the means (levers) for change. Sometimes, these levers are presented as a sequence as in Kotters eight steps for change. Those 8 steps provides leaders with a clear progression in the managing of change.
But there are seven levers for change:
1 A compelling case for change “creating a sense of urgency”
2 Challenging the taken for granted
3 Changing operational processes and routines
4 Symbolic management
5 Power and political systems
6 Timing
7 Visible short-term wins
What is leadership?
Leadership is the process of influencing an organisation in its efforts towards achieving an aim or goal.
Which are the strategic leaders? (3)
Top managers
Middle managers
Entrepreneurial leaders
What is the key roles for top managers?
- envisioning future strategy
- aligning the organisation to deliver that strategy
- embodying change
