Leading Change: Overcoming the Ideology of Comfort and the Tyranny of Custom / Edition 1

by James O'Toole

Overview

In Leading Change, James O'Toole argues that outdated Machiavellian dictates of situational leadership are ultimately ineffective—and demonstrates instead that successful leadership is rooted in high moral purpose and consistent respect for followers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555426088
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	03/30/1995
Series:	Jossey-Bass Leadership Series , #198
Edition description:	1st
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.78(h) x 1.09(d)

About the Author

JAMES O'TOOLE is a noted authority on leadership and vice president of The Aspen Institute, where he directs the renowned program as Executive Seminar and the Corporate Leaders Forum. He is co-founder (with Warren Bennis) and most recently served as executive director of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. A Rhodes Scholar, O'Toole has consulted widely to businesses and governments and served as special assistant to Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Elliot Richardson and as chairman of the Task Force on Work in America. His twelve best-selling books include The Executive's Compass (1993) and Vanguard Management (named one of the best books of 1985 by Business Week), Making America Work (1981), and Work in America (1973). O'Toole's work has been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, Fortune, and The Economist, and he has served on the prestigious Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Table of Contents

Christ Comes to Brussels: An Introduction to Values-Based Leadership.

LEADERS LEADING CHANGE.

The Rushmoreans: An Indelible Lesson in Values-Based Leadership.

The Corporate Rushmoreans: How to Lead Change Effectively and Morally.

The Realists and the Fallacy of Tough Leadership.

Why Amoral Leadership Doesn't Work.

Leaders of Leaders: Why Values-Based Leadership Is an Unnatural Act.

Why Democratic Leadership Is Not an Oxymoron.

FOLLOWERS RESISTING CHANGE.

Change Resisted: Thirty-Two Hypotheses Why.

Drucker Unheeded: Two Potent Sources of Resistance to Change.

Deming Ignored: Premature Articulation or Flawed Leadership?

Owen Unrecognized: The Early Promise of the New Management.

Owen Rejected: Valid Reasons or Rationalization?

Mill Interpreted: The Despotism of Custom.

The Ideology of Comfort: A "Good Enough" Explanation of Resistance to Change.

Editorial Reviews

"A compelling book! Jim O'Toole argues convincingly that the complexity and turmoil of our time demands leadership that is right—not leadership that simply works." (Kermit Campbell, CEO, Herman Miller, Inc.)

From the Publisher

O'Toole's book is stronger in its parts than in its sum. The author, vice president of the Aspen Institute, offers some practical wisdom about leadership, derived in large part from the lessons to be learned from the lives of the figures carved on Mt. Rushmore; other, more recent "corporate Rushmoreans"; and the writings of such thinkers as management guru Peter Drucker, British industrialist Robert Owen, and English philosopher John Stuart Mill. But these are simply insights scattered throughout the pages for the reader to glean rather than elements of a strong, clear, readily identifiable thesis. Some valuable things are said, but the premises tend to be generalizations about generalizations, often specific in illustration but vague in pattern. Interesting in places but not essential.-A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston

Library Journal

Held up as exemplary in a decade that's desperately seeking a new order for business, in case history after case history of corporations and their executives, are usually names like Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's, Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, and even Jack Welch of GE. But those models just won't work anymore, says professor, consultant, and award-winning author O'Toole. Instead, he uses examples from art, history, philosophy, and, yes, occasionally business to probe the answers to three questions: Why do organizations resist change? How can leaders effect change? What should the leadership philosophy be to most effectively (and morally) induce organizational change? He concludes that a values-based leadership is the only way to pull (not push) change; that change challenges the psychological comfort of the powerful--hence, the basis for resistance; and that imposing new values and new visions will work only if leaders create followers. A thoughtful essay, not a how-to manual, that will most likely spark discomfort among legions of American managers.

Barbara Jacobs