Now, if you stand still, your business will not succeed, and if there is no change, there will be no improvement. Course correction, reorganization, and strategic reorientation may all be necessary. Changes in technology continue to require restructuring of major industries. But over the past quarter century or so, the idea of destruction has metastasized into a kind of cult. Its belief is that everything must always be destroyed, and if you don't change everything, you will change yourself. I'm losing.
You can take courses on disruption at Stanford, Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard Business Schools. A leading business magazine has an article on its cover titled “Building a Leadership Team for Transformation: Your Organization's Future Depends on It.'' And if that's what you're looking for in the Catechism of Chaos, you can buy an inspirational poster with slogans like: to confuse or to confuse; Move fast and break things. Of course, part of this is a product of the arrogance of Silicon Valley technologists. However, there is also a belief among some that a fundamental task of leaders is to facilitate change. It's hard to remember a time when there were any other ideas about how to run a company.
Moreover, the majority of business executives, along with the consultants and bankers who advise them, the activist investors who drive them, and the financial analysts who evaluate their efforts, have grown up following this tenet of change, so they are constantly Separation becomes a kind of thing. of the flywheel. Leaders encourage change because that is their job. Advisors, investors, and analysts react positively because they have been taught that change is always a good thing. Reputation and/or stock prices rise rapidly, and executives (who are paid, remember, mostly stock) feel appropriately rewarded for maximizing shareholder value. Then everyone moves on to the next change.
However, it is hardly clear whether this is producing the desired results. Research on merger and acquisition activity indicates that mergers and acquisitions destroy shareholder value rather than adding to it 60 to 90 percent of the time. Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford Business School, argues that layoffs rarely cut costs, improve productivity, or solve a company's fundamental problems. And few who have experienced an organizational reorganization remember it as an opportunity for a sudden bloom of productivity and creativity.
Seeing it through the eyes of those on the front lines makes it clearer why this gap between intentions and results exists. After all, when people around you are being “transferred” or you suddenly find yourself working for a new boss who is not yet convinced of your abilities, all this change and confusion can lead to It's impossible to tell yourself that there is. Totally improved.
