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Magnify Leadership and Development
Article Newsletter
Greetings!
Welcome to our second newsletter. This month we continue our series of articles about change leadership. Without doubt, managing change effectively is one of the biggest challenges of leaders at any level within organizations. We hope that these articles will assist you as you manage change in your organization. As part of our community, Magnify Leadership and Development will periodically send you informational articles that may benefit you and your company. We thank you for your association with Magnify Leadership and Development. We look forward to the opportunity to work with you to improve the performance of your team or organization. |
| Alligators Nipping at Your Heels
Day to day problems of the business often prevent leaders from taking the time out to think, plan and act in order to make the kind of transformational changes that are needed in organizations. In the Heart of Change, John Kotter presents the case study "When Alligators are Nipping at Your Heels" as an example of a leader who decided to deal with the crisis confronting him and his organization before he began to look for ways to transform the organization. Kotter quotes Nick Pearce as saying that "you have to focus on putting out the big fires and on anything that can quickly restart those fires" before you can begin working on bigger transformation (Kotter, p. 25).
However, the pace of work and change is happening so quickly in today's work environment, a leader runs the risk of using "putting out fires" as an excuse of not finding the time, energy and focus to address the very real issues that need to be changed within an organization. The felt need to focus on the fires, in fact, can derail any effort from implementing change. As Anderson and Anderson state, "many of the current struggles with transformation are a result of leaders not attending to the cultural, behavioral, and mindset components of transformation or not attending to them in ways that make real impact" (Anderson and Anderson, p. 16).
Managers are often compelled to deal with the business issues of the day. They feel their expertise and experience is needed to help "put out fires" in their area of expertise. Leaders however, recognize that they must focus on the business of building "burning platforms" that help people and organizations realize the need for change, that compel them to move out of their comfort zone and begin to change (Kotter, p. 27). This takes time and energy and focus. Using excuses that the organization has too many fires to put out only distracts from the real attention and encourages employees to fall back in the old way of doing things rather than focusing on the change at hand.
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About James Gehrke
Founder of Magnify Leadership and Development
James has over 25 years of experience working for some for the world's leading Corporations. He headed Pfizer's Learning and Development for all of Europe, Canada, Africa and the Middle East where he was instrumental in the development of a global management curriculum and other training initiatives to enhance organizational effectiveness for over 30,00 employees. He has worked on high level cross functional teams addressing issues such as Field Force Effectiveness, Change Leadership, Leader Behavior Development, Executive Coaching and many others. James also has extensive experience in Sales, Sales Management and Training.
Since founding Magnify Leadership and Development, James has developed, facilitated and coached programs including; Change Leadership, Coaching, Communication Skills, Sustaining Learning, Interviewing Skills, Leadership, Territory Management for dozens of leading global organizations; including, IMS, CMOE, Advantis Research, Pfizer, Disitronics, ASTD, Coventry Health, Wilson Learning, Sinclair, StratX and many others. James is bilingual and can facilitate and coach in both English and Spanish.
Contact James at
1 801 266 0849 to learn how we can help your organization with your leadership and communication development needs.
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