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Showing posts from April 13, 2010

Dear Leaders, You Have To Change Too!

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Last week I had a series of interviews with executives from a company which manufactures cancer treatment equipment. What stood out were two things: 1.     Leaders are not open for personal change. 2.     The new ways of doing business were totally unknown: old practices were the norm. Unfortunately these issues are very widespread. ‘Unfortunately’ because that heavily impacts the culture and the enthusiasm in an organization as well as its (lack of) competitiveness. Ad 1 Leaders are not open for personal change. In 2009 McKinsey published an excellent article: The irrational side of change  management. Most senior executives understand and generally buy into Ghandi’s famous aphorism, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” They commit themselves to personally role modeling the desired behaviors. And then, in practice, nothing significant changes. The reason for this is that most executives don’t count themselves among the ones who need to change. How many executives whe