Most of us have lived long enough corporate lives to recognize this scenario.
CEO announces sweeping strategy shift for company. Managers and employees buy in enthusiastically — everyone is on board! And the result is…
Nothing.
Change doesn’t take hold. An opportunity to pivot the direction of the organization is lost.
What went wrong?
In an intriguing research paper by Harvard Business School professor emeritus Michael Beer and coauthors, concludes such initiatives don’t die from lack of buy-in from the organization. Instead, as Embracing Commitment and Performance: CEOs and Practices Used to Manage Paradox summarizes, what is lacking is “the kind of commitment that is useful for the implementation of strategy and sustainable performance.”
Some CEOs have already figured this out; they’ve created an alternative, little recognized approach for driving strategic change. The research group interviewed 26 CEOs in this cohort to learn what they know that most of us don’t.
Setting The Scene
The bottom line is this: framing is everything.
One would normally expect a company’s leader to launch a change initiative by listing major choices to be made or dilemmas to be faced. A dilemma might be that in the short run this change will cost us productivity and profit, but we will gain in the long run.
The successful change-agent CEOs, however, do none of this — they do not speak in terms of either-or. Instead, their language is both-and. We can have both short-term profitability and long-term gain.
(The CEOs) argued that seemingly conflicting outcomes cannot be made the subject of choice, nor can they be balanced. Instead, it is the role of the CEO to embrace paradoxes and meet both ends at the same time.
The researchers identified five practices to embrace paradox:
- Confront reality
- Release energy
- Create a community of purpose
- Amplify leadership impact
- Shape the Leadership Context
The Paradox Advantage
What are the advantages of promoting and managing paradox? For one, it’s an organizationwide effort, not a top-down directive. “By engaging people not only in the current work but also in the development of strategy, strategic change is made easier, less costly and more powerful.”
Read the paper, then share your thoughts with us. Should B-schools start teaching paradox management? Do you know CEOs who are Paradox Masters?
