Breaking the Code of Change by Beer and Nohria - Book Report/Review Example

Summary of Chapters Table of Contents Chapter Four 2 Top-Led Change 2 Chapter Five 4 Leadership of Change 4 Chapter Six 5 Top-Down versus Participative Management of Organizational Change 5 Conclusion 7 References 8 Chapter Four Top-Led Change The most effective change should begin at the top because senior executives as well as top management in an organization are better positions to lead organizational reinvention. The top management should engage lower organizational levels in establishing the suitable local visions, operation goals, and approaches anytime a change is being implemented in an organization. Involving lower level employees is important because they are the ones that can effectively translate corporate strategies and efficient operating approaches (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). The business world is ever changing, getting more complicated, increasing demands and increasing competition and therefore organizations need to change their strategies to respond to organization-wide changes. A successful change should thus be systematic and generates key alterations and thus organizational is costly. The reason why top-led change has a higher likelihood of success in key change efforts is that senior management has breadth of perspective and strategy formulation role and their position as organizational leaders gives them power to make key organizational decisions such as an organizational change (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). Senior management has organizational roles that require them to take a multifunctional business approach to decisions and hence they have broadly defined perspectives. Additionally, senior leaders have a higher likelihood of appreciating how an organization is an intertwined set of functions and systems, whereby changes in one will affect the other (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). Senior organizational leaders represent the controlling or guiding force in regard to organizational activities, such as changes. As a result, they have a special advantage over the juniors because in case of an organizational change they are in a position of harnessing the power of the attribution process. Senior leaders are able to use events and their own behaviours to inform the whole organization about what should be done. The ability to harness attributions hence becomes predominantly vital within organizational change efforts. This is because all organizational members are attentive to what senior leaders pay attention to. On the contrary, junior managers have lower status and limited access to the limelight and hence it is hard for them to develop comparable attributes among other organizational members, particularly among their peers and other departments. Junior leaders lack adequate formal authority to project attributions. Accordingly, it is hard for low-level leaders to capitalize on attribution process that can otherwise improve their efforts to stimulate organizational change (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). Another reason why top-led change efforts are most effective in driving change in an organization is due to their power position. In particular, senior leaders can control rewards, performance, recruitment, information, people as well as access to resources and these are the organizational building blocks. For instance, senior leaders have the power to fill important positions with supportive change agents and can also remove anyone who they deem to be blocking organizational changes. Obviously, junior levels do not have this level of authority and power. In addition, senior organizational leader possess political influence and therefore they can deploy this influence to access valuable resources and to change attention to specific business functions and individuals. Therefore, in case of an organizational change, senior leaders can use their political influence to implement the change (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). Chapter Five Leadership of Change A leadership of change involves willing and committed followers and therefore ideal leadership and organizational change can only be possible with the entire inclusion, initiative as well as cooperation of followers. Therefore, the senior leaders should be able to connect with their followers when implementing changes for the change to be effectual. Effective leaders should be able to hold two conflicting ideas concurrently without rejecting either (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). Organizational systems are the ones that promote cooperation and collaboration and also it is the systems that make change not just effectual but possible in the world where the technological and political complexity is increasing very rapidly and provides increasingly fewer arenas whereby individual action, top-down leadership emerges. However, in spite of collaboration between the leaders and followers being paramount in change implementation, the culture mainly recognizes and confers status on individuals and not on the teams of individuals that make change possible (Beer & Nohria, 2000). The current organizations are post-bureaucratic and need a new type of alliance between leaders and the followers. This is because the main stem-winder for successful change is the workforce which involves creating an alliance between the personnel and the top leadership. During any change implementation, coalition of the top leadership and the workforce is important because the followers feel valued and this results to high morale on their part and thus change implementation is likely to be successful. Even though with technical problems is comparatively simple with top-down leadership where this type of leadership can solve clear-cut problems; adaptive problems that are complex, for instance dealing with a patient with a terminal disease or cleaning up an ecological hazard, numerous organizational stakeholders should be involved and mobilized. Accordingly, adaptive problems, such as change implementation require complex and diverse alliances between the leaders and the followers (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). The present organizations are evolving into federations, networks, cross-functional teams, temporary systems, ad hoc task forces, matrices with their obs top-down leadership. Therefore, such organizations need leaders who encourage healthy opposition and value and appreciate followers who have courage to no to their proposals. This is because the leaders will encourage dialogue and sharing of ideas with the leaders in regard to any organizational change. Successful leaders should support culture variations and should be aware of the fact that diversity is the best hope for long-term organizational survival and success. Therefore effective leaders should have the most attentive ear because the present organizations are structure established of energy and ideas led by leaders who are happy with their task and not leaving their followers behind (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). Chapter Six Top-Down versus Participative Management of Organizational Change To tap organizational resources and to overcome their own limitations, leaders should make sure that organizational members are actively involved within all aspects of the organizational change process. Basically, the top leadership team and the CEO possess wisdom regarding change, whereas workers are the potential source of error, inadequacy, and special interest pleading. To make sure that the strategic change generated within the top team is not subverted, it is important for all organizational members to faithfully perform the initiatives generated from the top of the organization (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). The rate of change demands that those operating closest to the action and this consist of the workers who relate everyday to customers’ fast changing demands, empowering them to make decisions to enable fast and efficient organizational responses. Therefore it is important that forefront employees’, accumulating and current knowledge regarding the volatile marketplace to be considered when debating about new strategic directions and initiating strategic change. In contrast, the rate of change requires fast and decisive leadership action from the organizational top leadership. Strategic leadership by the top executive team is very important during organizational change because change process involves constructing a consensual strategic goal among the top executive team. The top leadership should involve other organizational stakeholders to avoid running a high-risk strategy (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). According to Beer and Nohria (2000), capabilities of all organizational employees are very important for participation within change to have successful outcomes. Top leadership should thus invest within individual professional and corporate capabilities in order to for the employees’ participation to produce positive input into strategic change initiatives. Improving capabilities enables a firm to change efficiently for future development and this is because investing in corporate capabilities makes key difference in an organization’s long-term success. There should be an alliance between the leaders and the led and also it is the efficient amalgamation between the exclusive advantages of the top leadership and workforce that determine the success of any change effort. The top leadership should be a unified team, who can develop a strategic goal and provide opportunities for the other organizational members to have full participation within the strategic process. Within knowledge-based organizations, change strategy should be informed through the in-depth insights of the skilled professional making up the organization along with the strategic synopsis of the top leadership team. Active participation of other organizational members is also important but to participate efficiently, all members should have the proper knowledge, have required skills and be capable of making a tangible and valid contribution to the change process (Beer, & Nohria, 2000). Conclusion As mentioned in chapter four, senior leadership is the best positioned to drive an organizational change effectively. This is because their position and skills put them at a better position that the lower-level leaders to orchestrate the change. Additionally, they also have the required political power to access the required resources and also the employees are respectful and listens to them and hence the workforce is likely to follow what the leaders directs them to do when implementing the change. However, for the change process to be successful there must be a connection between the leaders and the employees. This is the reason why the senior leaders should be able to connect with their followers because top-leadership alone cannot implement the change without involving the other organizational members. A team work between the top-leadership and other organizational workers facilitates an effective change because the followers can follow all the strategic directions the top-leadership gives to them during change implementation. As chapter five informs, alliance between the top-leadership and the lower-level workers is paramount and thus capabilities of all organizational employees are very important for participation within change to have successful outcomes. Therefore, the top leadership should include employee participation during the change implementation. With this, it will be possible to integrate the advantages of the upper and lower strata and this is the basis of the success of any change effort. References Beer, M & Nohria, N. (2000). Breaking the Code of Change. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press. Read More