Communicate A Vision To Shift Strategy, Shape Networks To Change Behavior

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Former Intel CEO, Andy Grove, described the decision to switch the company’s focus from memory chips to microprocessors as a “strategic inflection point” that arose from a single conversation between he and CEO Gordon Moore. Armed with that vision they transformed the company in three years.

Yet when Lou Gerstner set out to transform IBM eight years later, he took a very different approach, declaring that, “the last thing IBM needs right now is a vision.” What he meant was that the firm’s culture was broken and behaviors needed to change. Until he could achieve that, the strategy wouldn’t matter.

Strategic transformations and behavioral transformations require vastly different approaches. Leaders, like Grove and Moore, can make unilateral decisions about strategy, but they can’t impose behaviors in the same way. You can communicate a vision and create alignment about a strategy, but to change behavior you need to shape networks.

How Change Has Changed

To effectively tackle transformation today, we need to understand that the change environment has shifted significantly since the 1980s and 90s, when the traditional change management frameworks were first being formed. Just like you wouldn’t use early languages like FORTRAN or…