Tech Topics - Winter 2008 - (Page 51)

REAL WORLD Change the way you lead CHANGE Author David Herold shares his message with management students ERIC TURNER By Kimberly Link-Wills T he co-author of a book on corporate change said CEOs most often are forced to resign because they mishandle that change. David Herold researched and wrote “Change the Way You Lead Change,” published earlier this year by Stanford Business Books, with Donald Fedor while they were colleagues at Tech. After 34 years at the Institute, Herold has retired, while Fedor remains a professor in the College of Management. Now consulting, Herold returned to campus in late September to deliver a College of Management IMPACT speech and said some changes are hatched from “dumb ideas.” “Frankly some of the changes that executives asked me to help them implement I thought were very dumb ideas. You try to tell them that, and they usually don’t take it very well,” he said. “I tried to have a major confrontation with a senior VP where I collected data from all his direct reports, each of whom agreed that this was not going to work. “I said to this vice president, ‘Look, this is what your people are saying,’” Herold said. “His answer to me was, ‘David, I hear you. … I agree with you, but I promised my boss we would get this done in 90 days, so we’re launching it on Monday.’ This is what you “What I now tell executives all the time is: ‘Think of it as a batting average. If you think you’re going to bat a thousand, you’re nuts.’ The question is: Why are so many of our companies batting .100 or .125 and what can we do to improve their batting average?” run into in the real world. There is a rush sometimes to implement half-baked ideas.” Herold and Fedor found that some changes fail because the members of an organization are just not up to the task. “They either don’t have the skills, they don’t have the motivation, they’re so overburdened by day-to-day events that they don’t even have any slack time to think about the change or adapt to it. In the book we label that turbulence, and I compare it to teaching someone to kayak in a nice placid lake and then saying, ‘OK, you got it, now let’s take you to a Stage IV rapid and throw you in,’” Herold said. Herold and Fedor devoted one chapter of their book to their contention that “Change Does Not Occur in a Vacuum.” “What brought Julie Roehm to the attention of Wal-Mart was her reputation, during five years at Chrysler, for pushing the envelope in her marketing campaigns. At the time, Wal-Mart wanted to change its image and recruited her to be senior vice president of marketing. The ‘edgy’ Ms. Roehm landed in Bentonville, Arkansas, took one look at Wal-Mart’s drab, gray, windowless offices, consistent with the ‘everyday low prices’ culture; grabbed a ladder and some paint; and proceeded to paint her office chartreuse with chocolate-brown trim. It was downhill from there,” they wrote. “As she and her counterparts in marketing pushed for trendier clothes to be carried in the stores, the merchandisers resisted and asked for more signage advertising low prices. The old-timers were digging in and thwarting the efforts of this outsider. Eleven months after her arrival, she was gone. Asked what Continued on page 52 TechTopics | Winter 2008 51

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Tech Topics - Winter 2008 Contents Letters Buzz Around Town Alumni House Rockin’ Good Time State of the Institute The Hill Presidential Search Going Airborne Student Life An Architect’s Eyes Weight Coach Robot Burdell & Friends Ramblin’ Roll Rural Readers Leading Ladies Yellow Jackets Beyond His Years Leading Change Real World

Tech Topics - Winter 2008

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