Engaging the Top Team and Leading the Change

The immense pressures and demands of leadership are often described in terms of high-stakes decision making: Executives "face hard choices" and "make the tough call." But whenever we ask executives about what "keeps them up at night,"we hear "How am I going to get the job done?" as often as we hear "What is the right decision?"

In other words, the "How?" of making a major change is just as important as the "What?" By far the hardest thing about the "How?" is getting the hearts, minds, and behaviors of the individuals in the organization aligned behind the change.

As leadership teams embark on the change journey, some of them assume that once they arrive at a particular decision, everyone in the company will simply fall in line behind the change. These teams, not surprisingly, grow increasingly frustrated when obstacle after obstacle stalls progress.

To make critical, strategic decisions — and then implement them — the top team must internalize the change from the beginning of the process, so that others will follow. Then the transformation must permeate the organization, with other influential employees doing their part to cascade the changes down to every level. And all the while, the five elements must be present to nourish the change, or real change will never take hold.

Read the Booz Allen study "Engaging the Top Team and Leading the Change."