cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

Leading changeHeifetz and Laurie: vision is not the answerHeifetz and Laurie (1997) say that vision is not the answer. They say thatthe senior executive needs to alter his or her approach to match the needsof 21st century organizations. They say that what is needed is adaptiveleadership. This is about challenging people, taking them out of theircomfort zones, letting people feel external pressure and exposing conflict.‘Followers want comfort and stability, and solutions from their leaders.But that’s babysitting. Real leaders ask hard questions and knock peopleout of their comfort zones. Then they manage the resulting distress.’ Theybelieve the call for vision and inspiration is counter-productive andencourages dependency from employees.There is a difference between the type of leadership needed to solve aroutine technical problem and the type of leadership needed to enablecomplex organizational change. Leaders of change should concentrate onscanning the environment, and drawing people’s attention to the complexadaptive challenges that the organization needs to address, such as culturechanges, or changes in core processes. This means not solving the problemsfor people, but giving the work back to them. It also means not protectingpeople from bad news and difficulty, but allowing them to feel the distressof things not working well. These ideas are quite a long way from theconcept of transformational leadership mentioned above, which indicatesthat successful leaders are charismatic, visionary and inspirational.Jean Lipman-Blumen: leaders need to make connectionsrather than build one visionJean Lipman-Blumen (2002) says that vision is no longer the answer. Sheencourages leaders to search for meaning and make connections, ratherthan build one vision. She notes that there is a growing sense that oldforms of leadership are untenable in an increasingly global environment.She says that the sea change in the conditions of leadership imposed bythe new global environment requires new ways of thinking and workingwhich confront and deal constructively with both interdependence (overlappingvisions, common problems) and diversity (distinctive character ofindividuals, groups and organizations).Lipman-Blumen talks about connective leaders (see box) who perceiveconnections among diverse people, ideas and institutions even when theparties themselves do not. In the new ‘connective era’, she says that149