Change-Friendly Leadership How to Transform Good Intentions Into Great Performance

Change-Friendly Leadership: How to Transform Good Intentions into Great Performance is a simple affirmation that successful organizational change involves – requires, in fact – the active, willful participation of the people affected by the change.

Change by announcement, change by slogan, and certainly change by executive decrees are doomed to failure.

Effective change requires genuinely engaging the brains of the people expected to embrace and even champion the new state of affairs.

Effective change requires engaging people’s feelings – not merely making a business case for action but making a compelling psychological case for action.

Effective change requires engaging people’s earnest hopes.

In this context hope is not used as the verbal equivalent of crossing your fingers: “I hope my team wins the game.” In this book hope is used to denote people’s heartfelt aspirations, their dreams, even their senses of self. Any change effort that ignores or pays mere lip service to that kind of engagement is destined for disappointment.

In the change approach prescribed here, the friendly factor is not just a play on words; it is the very foundation for effectively engaging people’s heads, hearts, and hopes. Think-friendly, Talk-friendly, Trust-friendly, and Team-friendly form a relationship framework, or operating system, that brings out the best in people.