Epic Think Tank
Leading Change and e-learning
Part 1: When do managers become leaders?
The hard-headed, practical Scots who made up our panel were not
disposed to spend time on the relative merits of various academic
theories of leadership. What was felt to be important was not so
much what an organisation's vision of leadership might be, as how
effectively and consistently that vision was communicated throughout
the organisation. Discussing the role of top management in doing
this, however, led to an interesting dialectic about the respective
roles of top-down and bottom-up change and how they relate to leadership.
Top-down versus bottom-up
One side of this argument says that true leadership of change has
to come from above. Where it is a case of taking a risk that will
move the organisation forward, radical transformation can only happen
with the sanction and active involvement of the organisation's top
officers.
On the other side sits the Toyota model, which is about changes
on the factory floor; about 'what can we better within our little
team of four' - about incremental performance improvements that
come from below, and together add up to one large change for the
organisation. This latter vision of change is fundamentally pessimistic
about the efficacy of top-down initiatives per se. Bad large-scale
decisions can undo the good work of incremental change, it says,
but good large-scale decision-making simply does not possess the
same transformative power as the bottom-up model.
Incremental change is always needed, countered the top-down lobby,
but 'a different kind of leadership kicks in around re-inventing
the company'.
Leaders and risk
An uneasy synthesis was achieved around the recognition that perhaps
both types of change leadership are necessary within an organisation
for success. A new restatement of an old dichotomy emerged out of
this discussion; incremental performance change being seen as the
preserve of managers, while more radical change called for leaders.
Perhaps the point at which managers become leaders, therefore, is
defined by the level of risk they are permitted (or permit themselves)
to take?
With a few mutterings about the danger of descending into semantics,
the debate moved on to how learning, and particularly e-learning,
could be used in the development of these leaders of change.
Next>>
Introduction
Background
Part 2 How can e-learning develop
these skills?
Part 3 Role of e-learning in a
change programme?
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