Driving Change

Obviously, today’s companies cannot afford to do business as they did at the beginning of the 1980s. They can no longer be goal directed, price focused, product driven, efficiently stable, hierarchical, machine based, rigidly committed, local/regional/national, or vertically integrated. Rapidly changing demands of the market, technology, employees, customers, and society are forcing companies to boldly adopt innovative ideas about management, work, products, and processes. Nonetheless, the new ideas will not completely drive out the old. Companies will still attend to profits. Some remnants of hierarchical structure will remain. Rather than a complete shift, there will be a change in balance, new emphases, and innovative tradeoffs. This is what Driving Change is about- how companies mix the old and the new in adjusting to the changing needs of their employees, customers, communities, technology, global markets, and the demands for more speed, innovation, and adaptability.The United States does not yet have a model for the 21st century company, so what emerges may come in many different shapes and styles. Changing concepts of organization may parallel fundamental changes in the ideas about physics and the environment. A similar view of organization emerges from chaos theory, which sees chaos not as a total lack of order, but as turbulence, movement, and change that is unpredictable but that has rules of its own. Finally, social organization suggests looking at business as a "democratic hierarchy" in which there is no ultimate authority. In this work, the authors stress what is often ignored both in management theory and executive planning (especially executive planning)- how to integrate all the elements. Throughout, they stress the links between one change and another, highlighting the more critical ones, along with pointers and cautions. The result is a practical guide to innovative change, which the authors warn, needs to be applied selectively depending upon each executive and manager’s unique situation.