Mistakes Leaders Keep Making: How to Overcome Deep-Seated Obstacles to Change by Robert H, Schaffer

Reflective Analysis Report

Student’s Name: Ahmed Hammoudeh

Organizational Transformation

Professor’s Name: Sheri Schulte

Date: 12/2/2015

What I Read

In the article, Mistakes Leaders Keep Making: How to overcome deep-seated obstacles to change by Robert H, Schaffer, there are four main pitfalls that need to be avoided as the organization strives towards success. These are sets of inappropriate expectations, failure to adopt an inclusive approach to the firm targets to attain overall goals, over-reliance on consultants and staff experts through limited commitments without the inclusion of measurable gains as one of the deliverables and endless preparations that only to serve to create an illusion of positive developments (Schaffer, 2010).

In the Article, Accelerate, the author John P. Kotter stresses on the need for innovation and strategic planning. In today’s volatile corporate environments, business entities must be agile and have the capability to survive unprecedented threats, take advantage of emerging opportunities and manage extreme changes. Despite the fact that traditional hierarchies form an operating system that can be optimized for the daily business operations, they are unable to handle the constant need to ensure that there is the creation of rapid change and complexity in response to the market and industry requirements (Kotter, 2012). Thus, the need to create a new strategy that works concurrently with the traditional organizational structure and culture and is spearheaded by a smaller team.

What I Learned

The article, Accelerate, helps identify one of the principal reasons that affects the change management process, resistance to change. In concurrence with the author, it is important to realize that in the process of organizational transformation, there exist forces both internal and external as per the Lewin’s Force Field Analysis that may hinder the change process. The existence of hierarchies presents the problem of having part of the staff develop fear when it comes to change, and this has to be addressed. Secondly, in line with the Lewin Change model, having clear and well-defined goals may help in the initial stages where the change leaders contrast the current situation and one that is desired (Dumas & Beinecke, 2015). There is also the significance of having change leaders, which the author labels as change agents to champion the desired change. Another critical aspect of the success of an organization is the need to develop a culture in which there is the delegation of tasks and responsibility both upwards and downwards. This enables the top executives to reduce the time and energy spent on particular assignments.