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REINVENTION REVOLUTION: REPORT FROM THE FEDERAL-FRONT LINES

Speaker: John Kotter Date: April 7, 1997 8:45 a.m.

In a day dedicated to executive learning and leadership, Harvard University business professor John Kotter succinctly summarized leadership's most important mission in the Reinvention Revolution as, "punching-up urgency and killing complacency."

Kotter showcased results from his research on successful leadership: a pony-tailed CEO from ICI in the United Kingdom, a demurely made-up Mary Kay Ash ("the heat-seeking missile,") the short and pugnacious Jack Welch from GE, and Kazuo Inamori, the Japanese CEO of Matsushita Electric who inspired employees by "valuing the heart." The shared characteristics of these leaders included a questioning restlessness, visionary plotting, and relentless lateral and vertical communication.

Kotter noted that differentiating management from leadership was difficult, but that three functions cross-cut successful management:

planning/budgeting organizing/staffing controlling/problem-solving (timely intervention.) Successful managers take complicated systems and make them functional, whereas successful leaders create enough "mass, heat, and energy" to blast away obstacles, energize people, and make things happen. The four leaders that Kotter showcased possessed a great deal of managerial competency, but also exhibited leadership by are changing and reconfiguring functional systems to the realities of the external world.

Kazuo Inamori's life was a fairly typical yet inspiring "rags to riches" story. Inamori grew up poor, his schooling was limited, he wasn't well financed or well-connected, and he faced two enormous setbacks, during the Great Depression and after WWII. Nevertheless, his risk-taking during the war and the depression are legendary; his companies experienced phenomenal growth during a time of world-wide economic contraction. Inamori's philosophy drove him to keep "a humble heart and an open mind, in order to keep changing and growing." The naivete of his ideals and goals were wrenched from the hardship of his youth, but translated into the success of his adulthood.

Jack Welch transformed GE from a lumbering dinosaur of a company. Although not terribly charismatic, in 1981 GE held 13th place in total market value, but by 1993 GE held the highest share of market value. Welch saw that GE was full of good people, who were too comfortable with the status quo. He formed a high energy group with enough skill to transform the company. The group's structure was non-hierarchical, and the communication was vigorous and open. As the company transformed, Welch needed to "move the old furniture out of the way," which included old systems, and midlevel bosses. Welch achieved short-term wins, which put off the cynics and the critics, and gave added momentum for more change-oriented tasks.

Kotter offered five points of conclusion:

The forces of change aren't going away. Change is not a function of politics, but a function of larger global forces; the global economy is a tidal wave of change. Successful reinvention is not a "zip-bang" affair, but takes skill and courage. Good leadership is needed; change is a function of good managerial leadership. "Find ways to stretch yourself," to develop one's own leadership capacity, and the capacity of those surrounding you. If the above point seems naive, think of Inamori, his life expands the notion of the capacity to overcome hardship.