Leadership and Change

“Small wins produce results because they form the basis for a consistent pattern of winning that attracts people who want to be allied with a successful venture.”(198) To demonstrate the value of an organizational culture that supports experimentation and incremental improvements, the authors used a story of a car dealership that was looking into ways for improving customer experience. The company’s earliest efforts focused on “in-house headaches” like redoing the kitchen and cleaning up the workshop, which actually benefited the workers more directly than it did the customers. However, in creating a more pleasing atmosphere for workers, attitudes improved and there was a positive feeling that company change initiatives were moving in the right direction. These small steps led to the company to take on more challenging and significant initiatives. This is a good reminder for leaders that paying attention to improving the organizational culture can have positive affects in other areas.

K&P assert that, by finding small ways that people can succeed in taking on new challenges, “effective leaders make people want to be involved and stay involved because they can see that what they are doing is making a difference.”(198) This relates to Csikszentmihalyi’s findings that “people perform at their best when they are confident that their skills match the level of challenge of the experience, even though the challenge might be a bit of a stretch.”(210) These concepts are connected to an earlier K&P concept from chapter 4, concerning the importance of leaders communicating a vision by connecting to what’s meaningful to others. The authors assert that what truly motivates people knowing that they are making a difference and that what they do matters.(134)

In another example of how small improvements can add up to significant results, the authors sited a DuPont study, which revealed “minor technical changes (ie. introducing forklift trucks) rather than major changes (ie. introducing new chemical processing technologies) accounted for over two-thirds of the reductions in production costs over a thirty-year period.”(197) The authors make a good point that rather than concentrating only on the major projects and innovations in a company as a measure of progress, it is essential to also keep in mind that there are indirect ways of effecting organizational change that may hugely beneficial, yet require less time, skill, effort and expense.

The authors make important points about taking risk in this chapter. One assertion is that “nothing new and nothing great is achieved by doing things the way you’ve always done them,(191) and on a personal level, “the only way that people can learn is by doing things they’ve never done before.”(204) K&P argue that there would be little support for innovation and experimentation if there wasn’t also room for initiatives to fail. They site several examples where mistakes are turned into collective learning experiences. The authors point out that scientists, designers, and inventors generally focus on potential flaws, which makes failure, and the lessons that come with it, quite revealing and informative.(204) K&P cite examples that are primarily from the corporate and innovation fields, and not so many examples from the nonprofit sector. However, in the reflection and action section of this chapter, the authors’ advice on conducting postmortems (ie. what worked and what didn’t) would serve any organization well. Obviously, we can all learn from our mistakes and take that information to the next project with the lessons learned. It has been my experience in the nonprofit world, however, that once a project is completed the organization is quickly on to the next one. In this way, I find the K&P textbook with the “reflection and action” sections to be helpful to leaders in reminding them to not overlook the obvious steps for improvement and excellence.

K&P themselves point out one of the weaknesses in this chapter. This chapter focuses primarily on cases of leaders’ “personal-best” successes, not their failures. In their studies of these leadership cases, K&P point out, “while 95 percent of the cases were described as exciting, about 20 percent of leaders also called the experiences frustrating, and approximately 15 percent said that their experiences aroused fear or anxiety.”(205) K&P do mention that with change there are enormous stresses, sacrifices, disappointments and failures that will come with risk taking. They advise in the close of this chapter for leaders to get some help and support from others, and that in times of change people need each other more than ever. This is another good reminder, but I wonder how helpful this advice is to the directors and leaders of smaller nonprofit organizations where the networks aren’t so large.

In chapter 8, K&P continue their common sense “how to” approach to leadership. I have found that while the K&P concepts are seemingly easy, when I examine my own experiences in organizations these straightforward guidelines are not necessarily in practice by the leadership in places where I have worked. Yet, their two main points in this chapter, breaking down large projects into manageable pieces and creating a climate for learning, are practical and realistic practices that would serve any organization well.