Senge (Senge et al, 1999) has some fairly challenging ideas about this. He says that successful leadership of change does not have to come from the top of an organization. It comes from within the organization. He remarks that senior executives do not have as much power to change things as they would like to think.
He asks why we are struggling so much with changing our organizations, and he attacks our dependence on the ‘hero leader’. He claims it results in a vicious circle. The circle begins with a crisis, which leads to the search for a new CEO in whom all hopes are invested. The new CEO acts proactively and aggressively, and makes some dramatic short-term improvements such as cutting costs and improving productivity. Everyone then falls in line to please the new CEO, who does not suffer fools gladly. Employees comply rather than work hard to challenge the status quo, and a new crisis inevitably occurs. This vicious circle does not result in new thinking or organizational learning or renewal, or even growth, and in turn feeds our desire to find new hero-leaders.
The search for a hero-CEO
Senge offers some stark truths about organization change, which counteract the reliance on top-level vision set out by Bennis and Kotter.
- Little significant change can occur if it is driven from the top.
- CEO programmes rolled out from the top are a great way to foster cynicism and distract everyone from real efforts to change.
- Top management buy-in is a poor substitute for genuine commitment and learning capabilities at all levels in an organization.
You can see Senge’s point. How could one or two brave people at the top of an organization really be responsible for envisaging and tackling the enormous range of challenges that present themselves when fundamental change is attempted? He claims that we need to think about developing communities of interdependent leaders across organizations. Different types of leaders have different types of role. He identifies three important, interconnected types of leader: local line leaders, executive leaders and network leaders.
Local line leaders
These are the front-line managers who design the products and services and make the core processes work. Without the commitment of these people, no significant change will happen. These people are usually very focused on their own teams and customers. They rely on network leaders to link them with other parts of the organization, and on executive leaders to create the right infrastructure for good ideas to emerge and take root.
Executive leaders
These are management board members. Senge does not believe that all change starts here. Rather, he states that these leaders are responsible for three key things: designing the right innovation environment and the right infrastructure for assessment and reward, teaching and mentoring local line leaders, and serving as role models to demonstrate their commitment to values and purpose.
Network leaders
Senge makes the point that the really significant organizational challenges occur at the interfaces between project groups, functions and teams. Network leaders are people who work at these interfaces. They are guides, advisors, active helpers and accessors (helping groups of people to get resource from elsewhere), working in partnership with line leaders. They often have the insight to help local line leaders to move forward and make changes happen across the organization.
The interconnections are hard to achieve in reality. We have observed the following obstacles to achieving smooth interconnection between the different roles:
- Executive leaders are busy, hard-to-get-hold-of people who can become quite disconnected from their local line leaders.
- Executive leaders and local line leaders rarely meet face to face and communicate by e-mail, if at all.
- Network leaders, such as internal consultants or process facilitators, are often diverted from their leadership roles by requests either to perform expert tasks or to implement HR-led initiatives.
- Network leaders may be busy and effective, but are usually undervalued as leaders of change. They often have to battle to get recognized as important players in the organization.
Senge’s model recognizes the need for all three types of leader, and the need for connectivity between different parts of the organization if change is desired.