Step Up, Step Back

Why do so many leaders’ change efforts fail? MIT Sloan School of Management senior lecturer Elsbeth Johnson – a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and contributor to the Harvard Business Review – believes change initiatives come to grief because executives embrace delusional thinking about change. She encourages them to drop any notions of leadership gleaned from Hollywood dramas that overvalue charisma and influence and, instead, to invest in the hands-on work of organizational transformation. 

Writing in a clear, accessible style and drawing on a wealth of change research, Johnson offers a strategy for change management that emphasizes how leaders should lead and how they should enable subordinates to apply their skills unimpeded by micromanagement.