Can You Get New Leadership without New Leaders?
By Rosabeth Moss Kanter, rkanter@hbs.edu.

Leaders who let people down have a hard time pulling them up. That's one of many reasons why turnarounds, whether of declining businesses or low-performing schools, often start by replacing the people in charge. New leaders untainted by the sins or politics of the past and uninfected by the resentments and negativity often associated with losing streaks can bring a fresh perspective. As the saying goes, it takes a new broom to sweep clean.

Significant change generally requires new leadership. Even when managers who presided over a period of decline admit mistakes and embrace new ways, it's nearly impossible for them to stir up the organizational energy needed for a turnaround. And even the most effective leaders can stay too long, becoming rigid and complacent.

The bad news is that replacing leaders is often essential. The good news is that you can do it by rotating people rather than firing them.

Folk wisdom suggests that you can't put old wine in new bottles or teach old dogs new tricks. Maybe. But with people, we have more possibilities.

A classic experiment in industrial psychology dealt with first-line supervisors – the first layer of management, generally considered the problem spot that affected worker productivity. It turned out that performance could be increased most by one simple action: rotating the supervisors so that each was now in charge of a different group. Starting over again with new people helped them abandon old habits more easily, or try new things without feeling they were losing face. They did not have to contend with relationships mired in old expectations or tensions.

Leaders get stale and increasingly rigid over time unless put in new situations. Even teams get stale. Another study found that product development teams hit their peak of performance when they are together from 2 to 5 years. It takes the first 2 years to learn to work together well, but after 5 years, performance can decline.

Being willing to move people isn't the same as REmoving them. A fresh start can give everyone a chance to see things differently, to face problems and solving them. It's a matter of perspective. It's hard to stand back and see the big picture when occupying one corner of it. So in the former job, a leader might have blind spots, yet see what's going on clearly in a new situation.

A different leader symbolizes to everyone that the weight of the past can be left behind. For one thing, people tend to interpret the old bosses' actions as self-justifying, chosen to rewrite past history. After all, if the old superintendent or principal or CEO had wrong ideas in the past, why should people believe he or she has the right idea now? New leaders, in contrast, are viewed as objective (even when bringing obvious biases).

New leaders are better able to disentangle the "doom loops" of a system in decline because they were not caught up in them and do not have to defend why they occurred. A major symptom of decline is avoiding communication and keeping facts off the table. An important step is putting a name to problems that have long gone unexpressed. Individuals might know what's going on, but they keep that knowledge to themselves, and each thinks he or she is only ones with this awareness. This is a phenomenon that social psychologists dub "pluralistic ignorance."

A senior official in one organization in need of revitalization proclaimed, "I'm absolutely certain there's not one person in the whole company who for one moment thought that we should do anything other than change some of our practices." Still, it took a new chief executive to name the problems and help other people say them out loud, to replace "pluralistic ignorance" with open discussion.

New leaders can more easily remove barriers that previous bosses had erected and provide a fresh perspective. Sometimes their major role is to encourage the people already there, who know what the problems are, to whip into action to find solutions. Sometimes they need to bring a different vision and an alternative set of practices.

Education leaders sometimes complain to me that their hands are tied. Unlike the private sector, they can't easily accomplish major system reform because they can't fire people. But my message here isn't to fire people, it's to help them change places. Don't give up on them, instead rotate them.

What we want are new beginnings and fresh starts, not necessarily entirely new people. The same leader who is viewed as a symbol of the past in one situation can become a signal of hope when he walks in a new door for a fresh start.

--Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds a chaired professorship at Harvard Business School and is author or co-author of 16 books, including her latest bestseller, Confidence: How Winning Streaks & Losing Streaks Begin & End, recently published by Crown. Find her frameworks for leadership in public education, developed with Dr. Barry Stein of Goodmeasure Inc., at www.reinventingeducation.org.
© Copyright 2005 by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. All rights reserved.