Managing Organizational Change
This chapter will focus on the roles of power, leadership, organizational culture, and attitudes toward innovation as they relate to strategic planning and management. The importance of lead- ership, the roles of top management and the board of directors, values and culture, and organiza- tional change all affect the quality of strategic planning and are in turn affected by it.
2.1 Strategic Leadership and Developing a Vision In articles in the business press and the literature, the words manager, leader, executive, and administrator are often used interchangeably. Consider, however, the implied judgments in the descriptions of a person as “a real leader” versus “just a manager,” and it becomes evident that the terms are different. Ackoff and Pourdehnad (2009) try to capture the differences as follows:
• An administrator is one who manages others in the attempt to accomplish a goal by the use of certain methods, both of which are specified by a third party.
• A manager is one who oversees others in the attempt to accomplish a goal by the use of certain methods specified by the manager.
• A leader is one who conducts and directs others in the voluntary attempt to accomplish a goal by the use of certain methods, both of which are chosen or approved of by the leader’s followers.
Although all types of executives have the authority to coerce others into doing what they want done, leaders more often use influence rather than authority to get others to do what they want them to do and rely more extensively on interpersonal communication and the strength of their relationships with others to effect change.
From this, one might assume that the only person who creates a vision is the individual at the apex of an organization such as CEO of the company or the president of a country. This is certainly not the