Collectively, we have been working on understanding organizational change for almost 50 years. What started for all of us while we were working as managers and leaders of a large consumer products company continued as a dissertation project and through our days as organizational and leadership consultants. In short, we have been engaged with the struggle to understand organizational change and transformation for what seems like our entire lives.
The immediate motivation for this project began nearly 9 years ago while we were helping the government of Botswana through a major transformation. After working with them for 2 years, one person within the government asked us what some generic lessons about organizational change are. He was looking for lessons that could apply not only to government organizations but also to for-profit organizations, churches, groups as large as a 60,000-person company, and groups as small as a 12-person work team. This seemed like such an easy question; surely there are some general principles of organizational change. However, after reading dozens of books (some of which were our own) and hundreds of academic articles on the subject, a general answer to our question was not found.
This question was so intriguing that it was part of the motivation for two books that we wrote. Transformational Leadership was an effort to understand the required skills needed to lead transformation.1 A second book we wrote was directly inspired by our experiences in Botswana. Leading Peak Performance: Lessons From the Wild Dogs of Africa was an effort to understand what seemed to be the conflict between leadership and teams.2 Drawing directly from our many game rides in Africa and our experiences working with teams and leaders, we argued that successful organizations are led by packs with wild dog traits (as opposed to leaders with lion or cheetah traits). While both books were worthy pursuits, we still did not have an answer to the government worker’s question.
Then it hit us: One of the authors remembered when he first moved out of his parents’ house and was living on his own. He wanted to bake a cake one day, probably out of boredom. So like most boys would do, he called his mother for help. She told him that before he started baking, he needed to have some key ingredients (sugar, flour, milk, salt, etc.). He remembered asking her how she knew what he needed; he didn’t even tell her what type of cake he was going to bake. She replied that it didn’t matter what type of cake it was: There were some generic ingredients that all cakes share.
From that government employee’s question and Marvin’s mother’s advice, this book was born. This book is about the generic ingredients found in all successful organizational change efforts. From our combined 35 years of experience inside a Fortune 100 company, graduate research studies at the top business and engineering schools in America and Canada, consulting experience with numerous public and nonprofit organizations (ranging from the U.S. Postal Service, Novartis, Lamar University, COLA, a clinical laboratory accreditation organization to the public sector of the country of Botswana), and our extensive reading of both individual and organizational change books and articles, we have developed these five key ingredients that produce successful change.
While writing this book primarily for leaders of organizations (for-profit, governmental, or nonprofit), the lessons from this book can also apply at the team level, the community level, and even at the individual level. As you will quickly see from reading this book, because transformation is ultimately an individual issue (in addition to a team or organizational issue), we feel that all individuals can benefit from understanding the ingredients necessary for transformation to occur. Good luck on your transformation journey.