Bulldozer00's Blog

There are tons of experts, articles, books, and references on the ephemeral topic of “change”. Over the years, I’ve read my fair share of books on change and one of the best that I’ve stumbled upon (so far) is “It Starts with One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations“. Authors Black and Gregersen assert that the 3 major brain barriers to organizational change are:

1. The failure to see
2. The failure to move
3. The failure to finish

The book is targeted at leaders who’ve “seen” that major change is needed and who feel compelled to move their orgs into the future. It provides a boatload of examples and solid, pragmatic advice on how leaders can help the DICforce see, move, and follow through on cross cutting change initiatives.

Black and Gregersen should follow up their nice work with a book on a more pervasive problem; the failure of corpo leaders to “see” the need for change in themselves. The sequel would advise the boatloads of leaders in this category to get off their duffs and continuously probe, sense, and decide what changes are needed for their orgs to remain viable in a fast changing and hostile external business environment.

At a certain age institutional minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat. – William Lyon Phelps

Bad leaders fail to “see” the need for change until a crisis jolts them into reality. That’s because the dudes in the head shed get comfortable with past successes and feel no sense of urgency to change anything – regardless of what they say. To paraphrase Carolyn Wells; ” actions, or a lack thereof, lie louder than words“.