ITS 833 – INFORMATION GOVERNANCE Chapter 7 Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019 1 1 Chapter Goals and Objectives What is the difference between structured What is the difference between unstructured and semi-structured information? Why is unstructured data so challenging? Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019 2 Generally, what is full cost accounting (FCA)? What are the 10 key factors that drive the total cost of ownership of unstructured data How can we better manage information? How would an IG enabled organization look different from one that is not IG enabled? 2 The Business Case for Information Governance Difficult to Justify Short term return on investment is nonexistent Long term view is essential Reduce exposure to risk over time Improve quality and security of information Streamlining information retention Looking at Information Costs differently Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019 3 3 The information environment Challenges of Unstructured Information Data volumes are growing “Unstructured Information” is growing at a dramatic rate Challenges unique to unstructured information Horizontal nature Lack of formality Management location Identification of ownership Classification Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019 4 Calculating Information Costs Rising Storage Costs (Short sighted thinking) Labor (particularly knowledge workers) Overhead costs Costs of e-discovery and litigation Opportunity Costs 4 Full Cost Accounting for Information Models Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model Return on Investment Model (ROI) Full Cost Accounting Model (FCA) Past, Present, Future Costs Direct Costs Indirect Costs Flexible Application Triple Bottom Line Accounting – Monetary, Environment, Societal Costs Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019 5 Full Cost Accounting General and Administrative Costs Productivity Gains and Losses Legal and E-discovery costs Indirect Costs Up-Front Costs Future Costs 5 The politics involved Tools needed to establish facts about the information environment SOURCES OF Costs of owning unstructured information, cost reducers, and cost enhancers Giving unstructured information value The IG enabled organization The End Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019 11 11 Radical Change, the Quiet Way by Debra E. Meyerson AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER, many managers experience a spang of conscience—a yearning to confront the basic or hidden assumptions, interests, practices, or values within an organization that they feel are stodgy, unfair, even downright wrong. A vice president wishes that more people of color would be promoted. A partner at a consulting firm thinks new MBAs are being so overworked that their families are hurting. A senior manager suspects his company, with some extra cost, could be kinder to the environment. Yet many people who want to drive changes like these face an uncomfortable dilemma. If they speak out too loudly, resentment builds toward them; if they play by the rules and remain silent, resentment builds insi.

1. ITS 833 – INFORMATION GOVERNANCE
Chapter 7
Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019
1
1
Chapter Goals and Objectives
What is the difference between structured
What is the difference between unstructured and semi-structured
information?
Why is unstructured data so challenging?
Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019
2
Generally, what is full cost accounting (FCA)?
What are the 10 key factors that drive the total cost of
ownership of unstructured data
How can we better manage information?
How would an IG enabled organization look different from one
that is not IG enabled?
2
The Business Case for
Information Governance

2. Difficult to Justify
Short term return on investment is nonexistent
Long term view is essential
Reduce exposure to risk over time
Improve quality and security of information
Streamlining information retention
Looking at Information Costs differently
Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019
3
3
The information environment
Challenges of Unstructured Information
Data volumes are growing
“Unstructured Information” is growing at a dramatic rate
Challenges unique to unstructured information
Horizontal nature
Lack of formality
Management location
Identification of ownership
Classification
Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019
4
Calculating Information Costs
Rising Storage Costs (Short sighted thinking)
Labor (particularly knowledge workers)
Overhead costs
Costs of e-discovery and litigation

3. Opportunity Costs
4
Full Cost Accounting for
Information Models
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Model
Return on Investment Model (ROI)
Full Cost Accounting Model (FCA)
Past, Present, Future Costs
Direct Costs
Indirect Costs
Flexible Application
Triple Bottom Line Accounting – Monetary, Environment,
Societal Costs
Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019
5
Full Cost Accounting
General and Administrative Costs
Productivity Gains and Losses
Legal and E-discovery costs
Indirect Costs
Up-Front Costs
Future Costs
5
The politics involved

4. Tools needed to establish facts about the information
environment
SOURCES OF Costs of owning unstructured information, cost
reducers, and cost enhancers
Giving unstructured information value
The IG enabled organization
The End
Copyright @ Omar Mohamed 2019
11
11
Radical Change, the Quiet Way
by Debra E. Meyerson
AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER, many managers experience a
spang of conscience—a yearning to confront the basic or hidden
assumptions, interests, practices, or values within an
organization that they feel are stodgy, unfair, even downright
wrong. A vice president wishes that more people of color would

5. be promoted. A partner at a consulting firm thinks new MBAs
are being so overworked that their families are hurting. A senior
manager suspects his company, with some extra cost, could be
kinder to the environment. Yet many people who want to drive
changes like these face an uncomfortable dilemma. If they speak
out too loudly, resentment builds toward them; if they play by
the rules and remain silent, resentment builds inside them. Is
there any way, then, to rock the boat without falling out of it?
Over the past 15 years, I have studied hundreds of professionals
who spend the better part of their work lives trying to answer
this question. Each one of the people I’ve studied differs from
the organizational status quo in some way—in values, race,
gender, or sexual preference, perhaps (see the sidebar “How the
Research Was Done”). They all see things a bit differently from
the “norm.” But despite feeling at odds with aspects of the
prevailing culture, they genuinely like their jobs and want to
continue to succeed in them, to effectively use their differences
as the impetus for constructive change. They believe that direct,
angry confrontation will get them nowhere, but they don’t sit by
and allow frustration to fester. Rather, they work quietly to
challenge prevailing wisdom and gently provoke their
organizational cultures to adapt. I call such change
agents tempered radicals because they work to effect significant
changes in moderate ways.
How the Research Was Done
THIS ARTICLE IS BASED ON a multipart research effort that I
began in 1986 with Maureen Scully, a professor of management
at the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons Graduate
School of Management in Boston. We had observed a number of
people in our own occupation—academia—who, for various
reasons, felt at odds with the prevailing culture of their
institutions. Initially, we set out to understand how these
individuals sustained their sense of self amid pressure to
conform and how they managed to uphold their values without
jeopardizing their careers. Eventually, this research broadened
to include interviews with individuals in a variety of

6. organizations and occupations: business people, doctors, nurses,
lawyers, architects, administrators, and engineers at various
levels of seniority in their organizations.
Since 1986, I have observed and interviewed dozens of
tempered radicals in many occupations and conducted focused
research with 236 men and women, ranging from mid-level
professionals to CEOs. The sample was diverse, including
people of different races, nationalities, ages, religions, and
sexual orientations, and people who hold a wide range of values
and change agendas. Most of these people worked in one of
three publicly traded corporations—a financial services
organization, a high-growth computer components corporation,
and a company that makes and sells consumer products. In this
portion of the research, I set out to learn more about the
challenges tempered radicals face and discover their strategies
for surviving, thriving, and fomenting change. The sum of this
research resulted in the spectrum of strategies described in this
article.
In so doing, they exercise a form of leadership within
organizations that is more localized, more diffuse, more modest,
and less visible than traditional forms—yet no less significant.
In fact, top executives seeking to institute cultural or
organizational change—who are, perhaps, moving tradition-
bound organizations down new roads or who are concerned
about reaping the full potential of marginalized employees—
might do well to seek out these tempered radicals, who may be
hidden deep within their own organizations. Because such
individuals are both dedicated to their companies and masters at
changing organizations at the grassroots level, they can prove
extremely valuable in helping top managers to identify
fundamental causes of discord, recognize alternative
perspectives, and adapt to changing needs and circumstances. In
addition, tempered radicals, given support from above and a
modicum of room to experiment, can prove to be excellent
leaders. (For more on management’s role in fostering tempered
radicals, see the sidebar “Tempered Radicals as Everyday

7. Leaders.”)
Idea in Brief
How do you rock your corporate boat—without falling out? You
know your firm needs constructive change, but here’s your
dilemma: If you push your agenda too hard, resentment builds
against you. If you remain silent, resentment builds inside you.
What’s a manager to do? Become a tempered radical—an
informal leader who quietly challenges prevailing wisdom and
provokes cultural transformation. These radicals bear no
banners and sound no trumpets. Their seemingly innocuous
changes barely inspire notice. But like steady drops of water,
they gradually erode granite.
Tempered radicals embody contrasts. Their commitments are
firm, but their means flexible. They yearn for rapid change, but
trust in patience. They often work alone, yet unite others.
Rather than pressing their agendas, they start conversations.
And instead of battling powerful foes, they seek powerful
friends. The overall effect? Evolutionary—but relentless—
change.
Since the actions of tempered radicals are not, by design,
dramatic, their leadership may be difficult to recognize. How,
then, do people who run organizations, who want to nurture this
diffuse source of cultural adaptation, find and develop these
latent leaders? One way is to appreciate the variety of modes in
which tempered radicals operate, learn from them, and support
their efforts.
To navigate between their personal beliefs and the surrounding
cultures, tempered radicals draw principally on a spectrum of
incremental approaches, including four I describe here. I call
these disruptive self-expression, verbal jujitsu, variable-term
opportunism, and strategic alliance building. Disruptive self-
expression, in which an individual simply acts in a way that
feels personally right but that others notice, is the most
inconspicuous way to initiate change. Verbal jujitsu turns an
insensitive statement, action, or behavior back on itself.
Variable-term opportunists spot, create, and capitalize on short-

8. and long-term opportunities for change. And with the help of
strategic alliances, an individual can push through change with
more force.
Idea in Practice
Tempered radicals use these tactics:
Disruptive Self-Expression
Demonstrate your values through your language, dress, office
décor, or behavior. People notice and talk—often becoming
brave enough to try the change themselves. The more people
talk, the greater the impact.
Example: Stressed-out manager John Ziwak began arriving at
work earlier so he could leave by 6:00 p.m. to be with family.
He also refused evening business calls. As his stress eased, his
performance improved. Initially skeptical, colleagues soon
accommodated, finding more efficient ways of working and
achieving balance in their own lives.
Verbal Jujitsu
Redirect negative statements or actions into positive change.
Example: Sales manager Brad Williams noticed that the new
marketing director’s peers ignored her during meetings. When
one of them co-opted a thought she had already expressed,
Williams said: “I’m glad George picked up on Sue’s concerns.
Sue, did George correctly capture what you were thinking?” No
one ignored Sue again.
Variable-Term Opportunism
Be ready to capitalize on unexpected opportunities for short-
term change, as well as orchestrate deliberate, longer term
change.
Example: Senior executive Jane Adams joined a company with a
dog-eat-dog culture. To insinuate her collaborative style, she
shared power with direct reports, encouraged them to also
delegate, praised them publicly, and invited them to give high-
visibility presentations. Her division gained repute as an
exceptional training ground for building experience,
responsibility, and confidence.
Strategic Alliance Building

9. Gain clout by working with allies. Enhance your legitimacy and
implement change more quickly and directly than you could
alone. Don’t make “opponents” enemies—they’re often your
best source of support and resources.
Example: Paul Wielgus started a revolution in his bureaucratic
global spirits company—by persuading the opposition to join
him. Others derided the training department Wielgus formed to
boost employee creativity, and an auditor scrutinized the
department for unnecessary expense. Rather than getting
defensive, Paul treated the auditor as an equal and sold him on
the program’s value. The training spread, inspiring employees
and enhancing productivity throughout the company.
Each of these approaches can be used in many ways, with plenty
of room for creativity and wit. Self-expression can be done with
a whisper; an employee who seeks more racial diversity in the
ranks might wear her dashiki to company parties. Or it can be
done with a roar; that same employee might wear her dashiki to
the office every day. Similarly, a person seeking stricter
environmental policies might build an alliance by enlisting the
help of one person, the more powerful the better. Or he might
post his stance on the company intranet and actively seek a host
of supporters. Taken together, the approaches form a continuum
of choices from which tempered radicals draw at different times
and in various circumstances.
But before looking at the approaches in detail, it’s worth
reconsidering, for a moment, the ways in which cultural change
happens in the workplace.
How Organizations Change
Research has shown that organizations change primarily in two
ways: through drastic action and through evolutionary
adaptation. In the former case, change is discontinuous and
often forced on the organization or mandated by top
management in the wake of major technological innovations, by
a scarcity or abundance of critical resources, or by sudden
changes in the regulatory, legal, competitive, or political
landscape. Under such circumstances, change may happen

10. quickly and often involves significant pain. Evolutionary
change, by contrast, is gentle, incremental, decentralized, and
over time produces a broad and lasting shift with less upheaval.
Tempered Radicals as Everyday Leaders
IN THE COURSE OF THEIR DAILY actions and interactions,
tempered radicals teach important lessons and inspire change. In
so doing, they exercise a form of leadership within
organizations that is less visible than traditional forms—but just
as important.
The trick for organizations is to locate and nurture this subtle
form of leadership. Consider how Barry Coswell, a
conservative, yet open-minded lawyer who headed up the
securities division of a large, distinguished financial services
firm, identified, protected, and promoted a tempered radical
within his organization. Dana, a left-of-center, first-year
attorney, came to his office on her first day of work after having
been fingerprinted—a standard practice in the securities
industry. The procedure had made Dana nervous: What would
happen when her new employer discovered that she had done
jail time for participating in a 1960s-era civil rights protest?
Dana quickly understood that her only hope of survival was to
be honest about her background and principles. Despite the
difference in their political proclivities, she decided to give
Barry the benefit of the doubt. She marched into his office and
confessed to having gone to jail for sitting in front of a bus.
“I appreciate your honesty,” Barry laughed, “but unless you’ve
broken a securities law, you’re probably okay.” In return for her
small confidence, Barry shared stories of his own about growing
up in a poor county and about his life in the military. The story
swapping allowed them to put aside ideological disagreements
and to develop a deep respect for each other. Barry sensed
a budding leader in Dana. Here was a woman who operated on
the strength of her convictions and was honest about it but was
capable of discussing her beliefs without self-righteousness.
She didn’t pound tables. She was a good conversationalist. She
listened attentively. And she was able to elicit surprising

11. confessions from him.
Barry began to accord Dana a level of protection, and he
encouraged her to speak her mind, take risks, and most
important, challenge his assumptions. In one instance, Dana
spoke up to defend a female junior lawyer who was being
evaluated harshly and, Dana believed, inequitably. Dana
observed that different standards were being applied to male
and female lawyers, but her colleagues dismissed her “liberal”
concerns. Barry cast a glance at Dana, then said to the staff,
“Let’s look at this and see if we are being too quick to judge.”
After the meeting, Barry and Dana held a conversation about
double standards and the pervasiveness of bias. In time, Barry
initiated a policy to seek out minority legal counsel, both in-
house and at outside legal firms. And Dana became a senior vice
president.
In Barry’s ability to recognize, mentor, and promote Dana there
is a key lesson for executives who are anxious to foster
leadership in their organizations. It suggests that leadership
development may not rest with expensive external programs or
even with the best intentions of the human resources
department. Rather it may rest with the open-minded
recognition that those who appear to rock the boat may turn out
to be the most effective of captains.
The power of evolutionary approaches to promote cultural
change is the subject of frequent discussion. For instance, in
“We Don’t Need Another Hero” (HBR, September 2001), Joseph
L. Badaracco, Jr., asserts that the most effective moral leaders
often operate beneath the radar, achieving their reforms without
widespread notice. Likewise, tempered radicals gently and
continually push against prevailing norms, making a difference
in small but steady ways and setting examples from which
others can learn. The changes they inspire are so incremental
that they barely merit notice—which is exactly why they work
so well. Like drops of water, these approaches are innocuous
enough in themselves. But over time and in accumulation, they
can erode granite.

12. Consider, for example, how a single individual slowly—but
radically—altered the face of his organization. Peter Grant1 was
a black senior executive who held some 18 positions as he
moved up the ladder at a large West Coast bank. When he first
joined the company as a manager, he was one of only a handful
of people of color on the professional staff. Peter had a private,
long-term goal: to bring more women and racial minorities into
the fold and help them succeed. Throughout his 30-year career
running the company’s local banks, regional offices, and
corporate operations, one of his chief responsibilities was to
hire new talent. Each time he had the opportunity, Peter
attempted to hire a highly qualified member of a minority. But
he did more than that—every time he hired someone, he asked
that person to do the same. He explained to the new recruits the
importance of hiring women and people of color and why it was
their obligation to do likewise.
Whenever minority employees felt frustrated by bias, Peter
would act as a supportive mentor. If they threatened to quit, he
would talk them out of it. “I know how you feel, but think about
the bigger picture here,” he’d say. “If you leave, nothing here
will change.” His example inspired viral behavior in others.
Many stayed and hired other minorities; those who didn’t
carried a commitment to hire minorities into their new
companies. By the time Peter retired, more than 3,500 talented
minority and female employees had joined the bank.
Peter was the most tempered, yet the most effective, of radicals.
For many years, he endured racial slurs and demeaning remarks
from colleagues. He waited longer than his peers for
promotions; each time he did move up he was told the job was
too big for him and he was lucky to have gotten it. “I worked
my rear end off to make them comfortable with me,” he said,
late in his career. “It wasn’t luck.” He was often angry, but
lashing out would have been the path of least emotional
resistance. So without attacking the system, advancing a bold
vision, or wielding great power, Peter chipped away at the
organization’s demographic base using the full menu of change

13. strategies described below.Disruptive Self-Expression
At the most tempered end of the change continuum is the kind
of self-expression that quietly disrupts others’ expectations.
Whether waged as a deliberate act of protest or merely as a
personal demonstration of one’s values, disruptive self-
expression in language, dress, office decor, or behavior can
slowly change the atmosphere at work. Once people take notice
of the expression, they begin to talk about it. Eventually, they
may feel brave enough to try the same thing themselves. The
more people who talk about the transgressive act or repeat it,
the greater the cultural impact.
Consider the case of John Ziwak, a manager in the business
development group of a high-growth computer components
company. As a hardworking business school graduate who’d
landed a plum job, John had every intention of working 80-hour
weeks on the fast track to the top. Within a few years, he
married a woman who also held a demanding job; soon, he
became the father of two. John found his life torn between the
competing responsibilities of home and work. To balance the
two, John shifted his work hours—coming into the office earlier
in the morning so that he could leave by 6 pm. He rarely
scheduled late-afternoon meetings and generally refused to take
calls at home in the evening between 6:30 and 9. As a result, his
family life improved, and he felt much less stress, which in turn
improved his performance at work.
At first, John’s schedule raised eyebrows; availability was, after
all, an unspoken key indicator of commitment to the company.
“If John is unwilling to stay past 6,” his boss wondered, “is he
really committed to his job? Why should I promote him when
others are willing and able to work all the time?” But John
always met his performance expectations, and his boss didn’t
want to lose him. Over time, John’s colleagues adjusted to his
schedule. No one set up conference calls or meetings involving
him after 5. One by one, other employees began adopting John’s
“6 o’ clock rule”; calls at home, particularly during dinner hour,
took place only when absolutely necessary. Although the 6 o’

14. clock rule was never formalized, it nonetheless became par for
the course in John’s department. Some of John’s colleagues
continued to work late, but they all appreciated these changes in
work practice and easily accommodated them. Most people in
the department felt more, not less, productive during the day as
they adapted their work habits to get things done more
efficiently—for example, running meetings on schedule and
monitoring interruptions in their day. According to John’s boss,
the employees appreciated the newfound balance in their lives,
and productivity in the department did not suffer in the least.
Tempered radicals know that even the smallest forms of
disruptive self-expression can be exquisitely powerful. The
story of Dr. Frances Conley offers a case in point. By 1987, Dr.
Conley had already established herself as a leading researcher
and neurosurgeon at Stanford Medical School and the Palo Alto
Veteran’s Administration hospital. But as one of very few
women in the profession, she struggled daily to maintain her
feminine identity in a macho profession and her integrity amid
gender discrimination. She had to keep her cool when, for
example, in the middle of directing a team of residents through
complicated brain surgery, a male colleague would stride into
the operating room to say, “Move over, honey.” “Not only did
that undermine my authority and expertise with the team,” Dr.
Conley recalled later, “but it was unwarranted—and even
dangerous. That kind of thing would happen all the time.”
Despite the frustration and anger she felt, Dr. Conley at that
time had no intention of making a huge issue of her gender. She
didn’t want the fact that she was a woman to compromise her
position, or vice versa. So she expressed herself in all sorts of
subtle ways, including in what she wore. Along with her green
surgical scrubs, she donned white lace ankle socks—an
unequivocal expression of her femininity. In itself, wearing lace
ankle socks could hardly be considered a Gandhian act of civil
disobedience. The socks merely said, “I can be a neurosurgeon
and be feminine.” But they spoke loudly enough in the stolid
masculinity of the surgical environment, and, along with other

15. small actions on her part, they sparked conversation in the
hospital. Nurses and female residents frequently commented on
Dr. Conley’s style. “She is as demanding as any man and is not
afraid to take them on,” they would say, in admiration. “But she
is also a woman and not ashamed of it.”
Ellen Thomas made a comparable statement with her hair. As a
young African-American consultant in a technical services
business, she navigated constantly between organizational
pressures to fit in and her personal desire to challenge norms
that made it difficult for her to be herself. So from the
beginning of her employment, Ellen expressed herself by
wearing her hair in neat cornrow braids. For Ellen, the way she
wore her hair was not just about style; it was a symbol of her
racial identity.
Once, before making an important client presentation, a senior
colleague advised Ellen to unbraid her hair “to appear more
professional.” Ellen was miffed, but she didn’t respond. Instead,
she simply did not comply. Once the presentation was over and
the client had been signed, she pulled her colleague aside. “I
want you to know why I wear my hair this way,” she said
calmly. “I’m a black woman, and I happen to like the style. And
as you just saw,” she smiled, “my hairstyle has nothing to do
with my ability to do my job.”
Does leaving work at 6 PM or wearing lacy socks or cornrows
force immediate change in the culture? Of course not; such acts
are too modest. But disruptive self-expression does do two
important things. First, it reinforces the tempered radical’s
sense of the importance of his or her convictions. These acts are
self-affirming. Second, it pushes the status quo door slightly
ajar by introducing an alternative modus operandi. Whether they
are subtle, unspoken, and recognizable by only a few or vocal,
visible, and noteworthy to many, such acts, in aggregation, can
provoke real reform.Verbal Jujitsu
Like most martial arts, jujitsu involves taking a force coming at
you and redirecting it to change the situation. Employees who
practice verbal jujitsu react to undesirable, demeaning

16. statements or actions by turning them into opportunities for
change that others will notice.
One form of verbal jujitsu involves calling attention to the
opposition’s own rhetoric. I recall a story told by a man named
Tom Novak, an openly gay executive who worked in the San
Francisco offices of a large financial services institution. As
Tom and his colleagues began seating themselves around a table
for a meeting in a senior executive’s large office, the
conversation briefly turned to the topic of the upcoming Gay
Freedom Day parade and to so-called gay lifestyles in general.
Joe, a colleague, said loudly, “I can appreciate that some people
choose a gay lifestyle. I just don’t understand why they have to
flaunt it in people’s faces.”
A Spectrum of Tempered Change Strategies
THE TEMPERED RADICAL’S SPECTRUM of strategies is
anchored on the left by disruptive self-expression: subtle acts of
private, individual style. A slightly more public form of
expression, verbal jujitsu, turns the opposition’s negative
expression or behavior into opportunities for change. Further
along the spectrum, the tempered radical uses variable-term
opportunism to recognize and act on short- and long-term
chances to motivate others. And through strategic alliance
building, the individual works directly with others to bring
about more extensive change. The more conversations an
individual’s action inspires and the more people it engages, the
stronger the impetus toward change becomes.
In reality, people don’t apply the strategies in the spectrum
sequentially or even necessarily separately. Rather, these tools
blur and overlap. Tempered radicals remain flexible in their
approach, “heating up” or “cooling off” each as conditions
warrant.
Stung, Tom was tempted to keep his mouth shut and absorb the
injury, but that would have left him resentful and angry. He
could have openly condemned Joe’s bias, but that would have
made him look defensive and self-righteous. Instead, he
countered Joe with an altered version of Joe’s own argument,

17. saying calmly, “I know what you mean, Joe. I’m just wondering
about that big picture of your wife on your desk. There’s
nothing wrong with being straight, but it seems that you are the
one announcing your sexuality.” Suddenly embarrassed, Joe
responded with a simple, “Touché.”
Managers can use verbal jujitsu to prevent talented employees,
and their valuable contributions, from becoming
inadvertently marginalized. That’s what happened in the
following story. Brad Williams was a sales manager at a high-
technology company. During a meeting one day, Brad noticed
that Sue, the new marketing director, had tried to interject a few
comments, but everything she said was routinely ignored. Brad
waited for the right moment to correct the situation. Later on in
the meeting, Sue’s colleague George raised similar concerns
about distributing the new business’s products outside the
country. The intelligent remark stopped all conversation. During
the pause, Brad jumped in: “That’s an important idea,” he said.
“I’m glad George picked up on Sue’s concerns. Sue, did George
correctly capture what you were thinking?”
With this simple move, Brad accomplished a number of things.
First, by indirectly showing how Sue had been silenced and her
idea co-opted, he voiced an unspoken fact. Second, by raising
Sue’s visibility, he changed the power dynamic in the room.
Third, his action taught his colleagues a lesson about the way
they listened—and didn’t. Sue said that after that incident she
was no longer passed over in staff meetings.
In practicing verbal jujitsu, both Tom and Brad displayed
considerable self-control and emotional intelligence. They
listened to and studied the situation at hand, carefully
calibrating their responses to disarm without harming. In
addition, they identified the underlying issues (sexual bias, the
silencing of newcomers) without sounding accusatory and
relieved unconscious tensions by voicing them. In so doing,
they initiated small but meaningful changes in their colleagues’
assumptions and behavior.Variable-Term Opportunism
Like jazz musicians, who build completely new musical

18. experiences from old standards as they go along, tempered
radicals must be creatively open to opportunity. In the short-
term, that means being prepared to capitalize on serendipitous
circumstances; in the longterm, it often means something more
proactive. The first story that follows illustrates the former
case; the second is an example of the latter.
Tempered radicals like Chris Morgan know that rich
opportunities for reform can often appear suddenly, like a $20
bill found on a sidewalk. An investment manager in the audit
department of a New York conglomerate, Chris made a habit of
doing whatever he could to reduce waste. To save paper, for
example, he would single-space his documents and put them in
a smaller font before pressing the “Print” button, and he would
use both sides of the paper. One day, Chris noticed that the
company cafeteria packaged its sandwiches in Styrofoam boxes
that people opened and immediately tossed. He pulled the
cafeteria manager aside. “Mary,” he said with a big smile,
“those turkey-on-focaccia sandwiches look delicious today! I
was wondering, though . . . would it be possible to wrap
sandwiches only when people asked you to?” By making this
very small change, Chris pointed out, the cafeteria would save
substantially on packaging costs.
Chris gently rocked the boat by taking the following steps.
First, he picked low-hanging fruit, focusing on something that
could be done easily and without causing a lot of stir. Next, he
attacked the problem not by criticizing Mary’s judgment but by
enrolling her in his agenda (praising her tempting sandwiches,
then making a gentle suggestion). Third, he illuminated the
advantages of the proposed change by pointing out the benefits
to the cafeteria. And he started a conversation that, through
Mary, spread to the rest of the cafeteria staff. Finally, he
inspired others to action: Eventually, the cafeteria staff
identified and eliminated 12 other wasteful practices.
Add up enough conversations and inspire enough people and,
sooner or later, you get real change. A senior executive named
Jane Adams offers a case in point. Jane was hired in 1995 to run

19. a 100-person, mostly male software-development division in an
extremely fast-growing, pre-IPO technology company. The CEO
of the company was an autocrat who expected his employees to
emulate his dog-eat-dog management style. Although Jane was
new to the job and wanted very much to fit in and succeed, turf
wars and command-and-control tactics were anathema to her.
Her style was more collaborative; she believed in sharing
power. Jane knew that she could not attack the company’s
culture by arguing with the CEO; rather, she took charge of her
own division and ran it her own way. To that end, she took
every opportunity to share power with subordinates. She
instructed each of her direct reports to delegate responsibility as
much as possible. Each time she heard about someone taking
initiative in making a decision, she would praise that person
openly before his or her manager. She encouraged people to
take calculated risks and to challenge her.
When asked to give high-visibility presentations to the
company’s executive staff, she passed the opportunities to those
who had worked directly on the project. At first, senior
executives raised their eyebrows, but Jane assured them that the
presenter would deliver. Thus, her subordinates gained
experience and won credit that, had they worked for someone
else, they would likely never have received.
Occasionally, people would tell Jane that they noticed a
refreshing contrast between her approach and the company’s
prevailing one. “Thanks, I’m glad you noticed,” she would say
with a quiet smile. Within a year, she saw that several of her
own direct reports began themselves to lead in a more
collaborative manner. Soon, employees from other divisions,
hearing that Jane’s was one of the best to work for, began
requesting transfers. More important, Jane’s group became
known as one of the best training grounds and Jane as one of the
best teachers and mentors of new talent. Nowhere else did
people get the experience, responsibility, and confidence that
she cultivated in her employees.
For Chris Morgan, opportunity was short-term and

20. serendipitous. For Jane Adams, opportunity was more long-
term, something to be mined methodically. In both cases,
though, remaining alert to such variable-term opportunities and
being ready to capitalize on them were essential.Strategic
Alliance Building
So far, we have seen how tempered radicals, more or less
working alone, can effect change. What happens when these
individuals work with allies? Clearly, they gain a sense of
legitimacy, access to resources and contacts, technical and task
assistance, emotional support, and advice. But they gain much
more—the power to move issues to the forefront more quickly
and directly than they might by working alone.
When one enlists the help of like-minded, similarly tempered
coworkers, the strategic alliance gains clout. That’s what
happened when a group of senior women at a large professional
services firm worked with a group of men sympathetic to their
cause. The firm’s executive management asked the four-woman
group to find out why it was so hard for the company to keep
female consultants on staff. In the course of their investigation,
the women discussed the demanding culture of the firm: a 70-
hour work week was the norm, and most consultants spent most
of their time on the road, visiting clients. The only people who
escaped this demanding schedule were part-time consultants,
nearly all of whom happened to be women with families. These
part-timers were evaluated according to the same performance
criteria—including the expectation of long hours—as full-time
workers. Though many of the part-timers were talented
contributors, they consistently failed to meet the time criterion
and so left the company. To correct the problem, the senior
women first gained the ear of several executive men who, they
knew, regretted missing time with their own families. The men
agreed that this was a problem and that the company could not
continue to bleed valuable talent. They signed on to help
address the issue and, in a matter of months, the evaluation
system was adjusted to make success possible for all workers,
regardless of their hours.

21. Tempered radicals don’t allow preconceived notions about “the
opposition” to get in their way. Indeed, they understand that
those who represent the majority perspective are vitally
important to gaining support for their cause. Paul Wielgus
quietly started a revolution at his company by effectively
persuading the opposition to join him. In 1991, Allied Domecq,
the global spirits company whose brands include Courvoisier
and Beefeater, hired Paul as a marketing director in its brewing
and wholesaling division. Originally founded in 1961 as the
result of a merger of three British brewing and pub-owning
companies, the company had inherited a bureaucratic culture.
Tony Hales, the CEO, recognized the need for dramatic change
inside the organization and appreciated Paul’s talent and fresh
perspective. He therefore allowed Paul to quit his marketing
job, report directly to the CEO, and found a nine-person
learning and training department that ran programs to help
participants shake off stodgy thinking and boost their creativity.
Yet despite the department’s blessing from on high and a two-
year record of success, some managers thought of it as fluff. In
fact, when David, a senior executive from the internal audit
department, was asked to review cases of unnecessary expense,
he called Paul on the carpet.
Paul’s strategy was to treat David not as a threat but as an
equal, even a friend. Instead of being defensive during the
meeting, Paul used the opportunity to sell his program. He
explained that the trainers worked first with individuals to help
unearth their personal values, then worked with them in teams
to develop new sets of group values that they all believed in.
Next, the trainers aligned these personal and departmental
values with those of the company as a whole. “You wouldn’t
believe the changes, David,” he said, enthusiastically. “People
come out of these workshops feeling so much more excited
about their work. They find more meaning and purpose in it,
and as a consequence are happier and much more productive.
They call in sick less often, they come to work earlier in the
morning, and the ideas they produce are much stronger.” Once

22. David understood the value of Paul’s program, the two began to
talk about holding the training program in the internal audit
department itself.
Paul’s refusal to be frightened by the system, his belief in the
importance of his work, his search for creative and
collaborative solutions, his lack of defensiveness with an
adversary, and his ability to connect with the auditor paved the
way for further change at Allied Domecq. Eventually, the
working relationship the two men had formed allowed the
internal audit department to transform its image as a policing
unit into something more positive. The new Audit Services
department came to be known as a partner, rather than an
enforcer, in the organization as a whole. And as head of the
newly renamed department, David became a strong supporter of
Paul’s work.
Tempered radicals understand that people who represent the
majority perspective can be important allies in more subtle ways
as well. In navigating the course between their desire to undo
the status quo and the organizational requirements to uphold it,
tempered radicals benefit from the advice of insiders who know
just how hard to push. When a feminist who wants to change the
way her company treats women befriends a conservative
Republican man, she knows he can warn her of political
minefields. When a Latino manager wants his company to put a
Spanish-language version of a manual up on the company’s
intranet, he knows that the white, monolingual executive who
runs operations may turn out to be an excellent advocate.
Of course, tempered radicals know that not everyone is an ally,
but they also know it’s pointless to see those who represent the
status quo as enemies. The senior women found fault with an
inequitable evaluation system, not with their male colleagues.
Paul won David’s help by giving him the benefit of the doubt
from the very beginning of their relationship. Indeed, tempered
radicals constantly consider all possible courses of action:
“Under what conditions, for what issues, and in what
circumstances does it make sense to join forces with others?”;

23. “How can I best use this alliance to support my efforts?”
_____________________
Clearly, there is no one right way to effect change. What works
for one individual under one set of circumstances may not work
for others under different conditions. The examples above
illustrate how tempered radicals use a spectrum of quiet
approaches to change their organizations. Some actions are
small, private, and muted; some are larger and more public.
Their influence spreads as they recruit others and spawn
conversations. Top managers can learn a lot from these people
about the mechanics of evolutionary change.
Tempered radicals bear no banners; they sound no trumpets.
Their ends are sweeping, but their means are mundane. They are
firm in their commitments, yet flexible in the ways they fulfill
them. Their actions may be small but can spread like a virus.
They yearn for rapid change but trust in patience. They often
work individually yet pull people together. Instead of stridently
pressing their agendas, they start conversations. Rather than
battling powerful foes, they seek powerful friends. And in the
face of setbacks, they keep going. To do all this, tempered
radicals understand revolutionary change for what it is—a
phenomenon that can occur suddenly but more often than not
requires time, commitment, and the patience to endure.
Originally published in October 2001. Reprint 792
Step 3
Get the Vision Right
In successful large-scale change, a well-functioning guiding
team answers the questions required to produce a clear sense of
direction. What change is needed? What is our vision of the new
organization? What should not be altered? What is the best way
to make the vision a reality? What change strategies are
unacceptably dangerous? Good answers to these questions
position an organization to leap into a better future.

24. Far too often, guiding teams either set no clear direction or
embrace visions that are not sensible. The consequences can be
catastrophic for organizations and painful for employees—just
ask anyone who has suffered through a useless fad forced on
them from above.
Visions and Strategies versus Plans and Budgets
One reason that smart people create no or poor direction for
change is because they have been taught that “charting the
future” means planning and budgeting. Truth is, when pursuing
large-scale change, the best planning exercise is never
sufficient. Something very different is essential.
Painting Pictures of the Future
From Charles Berry
In 1994, we knew we were on the brink of having to redefine
what we wanted to be as a business. Major structural changes
were starting to happen within our industry due to
deregulation—opening up our marketplace to competitors and
ending our protection from being acquired by other firms.
Deregulation and liberalization of the UK market meant, firstly,
overseas competition was coming in and, secondly, there was a
chance for us to start expanding overseas through acquisition.
Everyone had their own opinion of what we needed to do, and
they didn’t all agree. Some people felt we should become a
diversified conglomerate, maybe like a Hanson, the largest UK
conglomerate. Others felt we should be an engineering
company, where we would effectively become contractors,
building and maintaining water, gas, and electricity networks.
Still others believed we needed to move further into
telecommunications and Internet services.
Our CEO at the time had tried to wrestle with this. He had sent
a memo to the heads of our major divisions asking them for
their views and asking them to suggest our options for the
future. It was a very orthodox planning process. The division
heads responded. All their ideas and suggestions were pulled
together by somebody in our head office and they, of course,
ran all the numbers for each of the suggestions. What landed

25. back on the desk of the division heads was a very dry report
with a ton of financial information—yards and yards of
spreadsheet analysis on debt/equity ratios, share price,
performance indices—the sort of stuff that sends most people to
sleep very quickly! A year later people were still discussing the
report, generally starting the conversation with “What was
figure 3.4 all about?” This would be followed by an exciting
discussion of figure 3.4. No real agreement could be reached.
People just didn’t have a good sense of what the options were
and what they would mean for us.
An “orthodox planning exercise,” as you find it in most
organizations, is designed for incremental change. Typically,
everyone involved knows their business in some detail. It
doesn’t take much to imagine options that are a little different
one way or the other. Planning and budgeting forces you to
think through the details. It allows you to say “Given what we
know, a 5.3 percent revenue growth target is sensible. To
achieve that goal, asking Fred to head the X project over the
next quarter is a good idea. The Y project will logically be
required, and its short-term costs in the coming fiscal year are
affordable in light of competing demands for cash.”
With large-scale change, extrapolating from the current, known
context is not easy. People typically do not comprehend all the
relevant options, or at least not very clearly. What does it mean
to “change all the business processes?” What does it mean to
become a “global” corporation? What does it mean to create “a
more innovative culture”? You can’t plan for what you don’t
understand. You often have difficulty even having a good
discussion of the issues. “We need to have a culture that
promotes risk taking.” “Well, yes, I suppose, but risk taking
means some errors, and our customers defect to competitors
when we make mistakes.” “I didn’t mean risky risk.” “Risky
risk?!”
Often we retreat into the seeming objectivity of numbers. But
with nonincremental change, financial analysis has to begin
with specific alternatives and then has to be based on

26. assumptions that are often hard to make or, again, hard to talk
about.
To help us grapple with this problem of how to redefine our
business, we began by picking six or seven basic options, six or
seven broad visions of the future. One was to carry on as we
were—business as usual—supplying electricity to our Scottish
customers along with some limited telecommunication and
Internet services. A second was to be an electricity provider for
the whole UK marketplace, not just Scotland. So we would
forget the limited growth opportunities we had identified in the
other two areas of business we were currently in. We’d refocus
and just do one thing really well. A third was to batten down the
hatches completely, retrench, and only provide electricity
within Scotland with a view to being acquired by another
organization. These three were probably considered, by many of
us at the time, as the safer options that we could take. The
others were much more expansive: to be an international
electricity company; a multi-utility, offering electricity, gas,
and water within the UK; a conglomerate; or an engineering
company. As we started to discuss these options, another one
emerged—to be in Internet services and telecommunications.
When we came to look at this again, we decided to develop
some very simple dimensions by which to describe the options:
• Sales turnover—what might be our revenue in ten years’ time
• Employees—how many employees we would have
• Customers—how many customers we would have
• Businesses—what core products or services we would offer
• Competitors—who our major competitors would be
• Beliefs—what we would have to believe about ourselves to be
successful
• Action steps—what the key actions necessary to achieve this
option would be
We put together two or three pages on each possible future. We
had financial numbers in there, but for the most part we kept the
detailed financial analysis separate. As we went through the
options, we tried to paint six pictures of the future and then

27. bring them alive. That was the idea—painting pictures of the
future.
We scheduled a series of meetings for the eight-person
executive team. Before the first meeting, we sent team members
the summary pages so they would have a chance to read the
material. When we met, I recapped the main points very
quickly, using an overhead projector. So for option 1,
international electricity provider, our sales turnover in ten years
would be . . . , and on through each of the very simple
dimensions we wanted to use. Then we would debate each
option. We would ask ourselves, “What would we look like?”
“What would be our number one product or service?” “Where
might we be located?” “What kind of people would we have?”
“What would our ads look like?” “What demands would
customers make on us?” “What would we do to respond to those
demands?” “What might the plants and offices look
like?” “What would we have to do especially well?” “How do
we feel about this?”
By trying to visualize the future, it gave us a feeling that went
far beyond numbers and abstract opinions. It helped us
understand the magnitude of the changes we would have to
undertake if we embraced any given option.
Our formal discussions were in four-hour meetings. We
narrowed down the options rather quickly. Conglomerate was
out, and setting ourselves up to be acquired was out. Where we
had identified “multi-utility in the UK” as one option, we began
to explore “multi-utility in the world” as another. The pictures
we had started were, in some cases, quite extreme, so I think it
was natural that people played around with them and created
new alternatives. After each meeting my team would put
together a summary of the options that were left and what we
had concluded about them. The summary was on one page. We
sent it to each of the directors. You could almost hear the sigh
of relief that they weren’t being sent another Excel file or an e-
mail with sixteen new attachments. From that point on, we
deliberately captured all the feedback after the sessions and

28. summarized it on one page only.
Some common ground began to emerge. “So, we are starting to
like the look of an international multi-utility. What would we
have to believe about ourselves to know that we would be
successful? How would we compete in each of these
geographies?” And the process started again. This time, we
tested our conclusions each step of the way. We began to focus
on the actions that we would take to achieve that vision and
whether the financials made sense. We also sent the one-page
summaries to our external financial brokers, who gave us some
feedback on how they thought the market would respond if we
went down each of those roads. We discussed their comments.
We started to get more illustrative about the shape of the
company, how we would grow, where we would get our
financing from. Our finance director said, “We will need to
triple the size of our company within five years if we are going
to provide our shareholders with a better return than if we had
just sold out.” Somebody else said, “We could triple in size if
we bought an electricity and water company in the UK and then
we made one other similar purchase internationally.” And then
somebody else said, “The pennies just dropped for me! I can
now see how we would do this.”
Having the financials underneath was necessary. But the
pictures were most important in helping us reach a consensus on
the vision. They were pictures of possible futures.
In cases of successful large-scale change, you find four
elements that help direct action: budgets, plans, strategies, and
visions. All four are different yet tightly interrelated, and each
requires a different development process.
A budget is the financial piece of the plan. A plan specifies step
by step how to implement a strategy. A strategy shows how to
achieve a vision. A vision shows an end state where all the
plans and strategies will eventually take you. A vision can
usually fit on a page and be described in an elevator ride. A
strategy might take ten pages and require a discussion over a
meal. Plans could fit into a notebook and require examination in

29. a series of meetings. Budgets could require a large notebook
and demand even more meetings.
A guiding team never creates all four elements by itself. Others
help. As in “Painting Pictures,” sometimes those others are
critical not just in providing information used in the process,
but also in helping create the right process.
Budgeting is a math exercise, number crunching. Planning is a
logical, linear process. Strategizing requires a great deal of
information about customers and competitors, along with
conceptual skills. Visioning uses a very different part of the
brain than budgeting. As the name implies, it involves trying to
see possible futures. It inevitably has both a creative and
emotional component (e.g., “How do we feel about the
options?”). When you use “orthodox planning” to create a
vision, frustration and failure are inevitable.
Painting Pictures of the Future
SEEING
Someone on the planning staff finds a new approach to
planning. With sufficient urgency in the group, a frustrated
senior management is willing to try it. The planner works with
this guiding team to identify some alternatives (e.g.,
international energy company), then fleshes each out on a few
pages of paper along a limited number of key dimensions. He
uses that material to create a discussion that helps others “see”
alternative futures.
FEELING
Frustration (“We aren’t getting anywhere”), anger (“I can see
the direction we need to go; why can’t we just do it?”), anxiety
(“Will we remake the company into something where my skills
won’t be relevant?”), and pessimism (“We’re going to be
acquired whether we like it or not”) go down. A sense of relief
grows (“Oh, I see what he’s talking about. I can see some good
alternatives now”). Optimism grows (“It could be a very
interesting company”).

30. CHANGING
They start to have much more productive conversations. They
start to make decisions about an intelligent vision of the future.
With incremental change, visions and strategies are often so
obvious that you don’t even think about them. All the work goes
into exercises that create plans and budgets. With large-scale
change, visions and strategies are the hard part because they
require venturing into unknown territory. And if they’re not set
correctly, you’re dead.
Without a good budget, you can run out of money. Without a
sensible plan, you can run out of time. Without a good strategy,
you can find yourself painted into a corner. Without a good
vision, you can choose a bad direction and never realize that
you’ve done so. You will have difficulty coordinating large
numbers of people without using endless directives. You’ll
never get the energy needed to accomplish something very
difficult. Strategic plans motivate few people, but a compelling
vision can appeal to the heart and motivate anyone.
The efficient coordinating function of vision is directly related
to the issue of speed. In a slow-moving world, a team can walk
slowly with blindfolds, guided by standards, without tripping
over each other. The team moves in unison, with their feet
going left-right-left at a well known cadence. If the lead person
runs into a wall, she says “Stop” (probably after “Ouch”). Then
she considers the situation and makes a new plan. The plan is
communicated—“We all turn 90 degrees to the left, take two
steps, then stop. I (the boss) will use my right hand to see if the
barrier is still on my right. Then we. . . .” Now imagine a world
in which the winners have to run and dodge walls, and do so
quickly. Without vision, and without everyone having the same
vision, running into obstacles and tripping over one another is
inevitable.
The problem of setting direction well, or poorly, during a large-
scale change is closely related to history. Accounting has been
taught to managers in modern organizations for many decades.
Planning became more of a systematic tool in the middle of the

31. twentieth century. Strategy was not a word used in business
school curricula until the late 1970s. Vision is still not a serious
subject in most of managerial training. Is it surprising what we
tend to do well and what we tend to do poorly?
Efficiency versus Service
No vision issue today is bigger than the question of efficiency
versus some combination of innovation and customer service.
With the pressures on enterprises everywhere, costs have
become a huge problem. Many transformations have at their
heart a belt-tightening vision. If you’re bleeding to death, a
short-term cost turnaround has to be the focus. But in many
situations, enterprises are not bleeding to death, yet the vision
is squarely centered on achieving much lower expenses. When
this view of the future is sensible—it sometimes is not—it can
still work poorly as a vision because most people have great
difficulty becoming excited about slashing expenses. Fear,
anger, and cynicism grow. Change is slowed, resisted.
There is a way around this problem, and it’s not ignoring costs.
It’s crafting service-oriented visions that are impossible to
achieve without actions that significantly reduce unnecessary
expenses.
Cost versus Service
From Ron Bingham
A vision focused on cutting costs, streamlining the
organization, or efficiency just wouldn’t fly. For the most part,
our people saw themselves as being here for the entire
community, for the public, for what they saw as the greater
common good. That’s the way they talked. “We’re not here to
make a profit but to provide essential services to the public.”
For the most part, they really believed this, often deeply. And
they were certainly not here to make a lot of money for
themselves. That is not the nature of state government, and we
all knew that.
But here’s the rub: The governor saw a lot of waste that had
built up over the years. He felt strongly that the public could
not, should not, be funding inefficiencies. For him, the bottom

32. line was saving money so the government could increase
funding in key areas like education. For my piece of the action,
he assumed the vision would have to be one of saving money.
When I began, I was of a similar mind.
So we have two trains on the same track coming at each other.
Efficiency is the issue; efficiency is not our mission. After a lot
of thought and discussion, I finally figured out that we could
and should have a vision of customer service. The idea was not
to abandon the efficiencies issue, but to think about it
differently, focus it differently. The staff thinks in terms of
providing essential services. Most would really like to provide
better service. They aren’t fools. They can see that the public is
not running around saying “Wow, is the state government great.
I mean, move over Federal Express and Wal-Mart, these guys
have got it.” Since increased funding was a total impossibility,
you couldn’t achieve better service with more money. So what
is the only option? Removing impediments to better service.
And removing impediments in the bureaucracy inevitably leads
to taking out wasted money. It follows logically.
So we chose the services vision. When we communicated that,
and did so as clearly as possible, people could almost see
themselves helping others the way they wanted to help others.
They could almost see a citizen of this state thanking them for
their good work. I think most employees honestly became
inspired with the opportunity to truly improve the way they
could serve the public. Stand aside, cynics—it really happened.
The response was incredible. We suddenly had people
throughout the organization examining what they did and
thinking about how they could offer better service. I remember
we had a meeting in front of the governor and his senior team
where employees were presenting their visions of how their
departments would operate in the future. The social services
presentation was especially inspirational. This woman stands up
and says, “Our vision is a future where we will deal with you as
a whole person, as a whole family. We’ll take care of your food
stamps, your training. We’ll help you so you can have a healthy

33. vital family. You will feel cared for and treated with respect.”
The passion with which she spoke was unbelievable. She was
committed and believed in that vision. She was going to make
sure these people were helped. And of course to do that meant
ripping apart the organization. Tearing down all the duplicative
practices that had people filling out the same forms ten times
whenever they interacted with social services. All that would
have to go, and so would some jobs along with it. But that
didn’t matter as much as community service, as much as helping
people who can’t help themselves.
A group from the revenue department presented a future state
where people could call in with a question about a tax return
and not have to wait on the phone for an hour. Even better,
people could get the information they required fast with no
follow-up. This from the revenue service! Can you imagine? To
do this meant the purchase of new technology—which, of
course, can be expensive and would have to be offset by job
changes, either transfers out of the organization or into other
departments. But the new system, if done right, could be much
more efficient, and, over time, save a lot of money.
All this created some disruptions. Because people were
committed to improving service, most were willing to put up
with that. Of course, not everyone felt this way, but enough did.
The result was, a few years into this, that we saved more money
than the governor ever dreamed possible. It blew him away. It
blew me away. And, we got more of what was also needed—
better service. The right vision made all the difference in the
world.
In many places today you have the same problem. Costs are
bloated but the workforce cannot relate to an “efficiency”
vision. In some cases, the complications are greater than in this
story. The workforce may be convinced that more money is
available. The management may be unwilling to invest in
information technology. The bosses may think customer service
is just fine. But in many cases, the vision and supporting
strategies are simply wrong. The vision is too narrow—it

34. doesn’t see the whole enterprise or consider all the relevant
relationships. Instead it feels like a mean budget. So anger and
fear grow. A vision that creates anger and fear among a
significant number of people will never work.
The solution in “Cost versus Service” can be used in many
places. The cynics are wrong: Most of us get a great feeling
from helping other people. So you make the vision service-
oriented, something with which people can identify. You put
blasting the bad system at the core of the strategy. When people
embrace these ends and means, costs disappear as a
consequence and you get better service. This idea can work in
manufacturing businesses, high-tech firms, financial services—
nearly anywhere.
Bold Strategies for Bold Visions
In an accelerating world, change visions are becoming bolder by
necessity. More and more executives now believe that their
visions must include being an industry leader, being a firm that
is first into new markets, or being the low-cost competitor. Bold
visions require bold strategies, and here is where the process
breaks down. Fine, let’s be the best, or the first, or the lowest-
cost producer. But how? People without a great deal of bold
strategy development experience often flounder. They can’t
figure out what to do because it’s different from anything they
have done before. They sometimes back away from the obvious
because it’s threatening. Or they convince themselves that small
modifications in their current ways of operating will achieve the
vision—eventually. Or, because they can think of no strategic
possibility, they conclude that the vision is ridiculous, even
though it is not.
The Plane Will Not Move!
From Debbie Collard
A C-17 is a huge aircraft. Its tail rises four stories. Watching it
being built is an incredible thing.
Aircraft are typically assembled in a series of locations within
one manufacturing facility, locations we call “positions.” You
start work in one place, then when a set of tasks are completed,

35. you move the plane to a second, and then another until you’re
done. In the case of the C-17, the main fuselage might be
assembled in position A, the tail attached over in position B, the
wings attached in position C, the cockpit electronics installed in
position D, and so on. For this, you have to have a hangar that’s
large enough for two or three 747-sized aircraft to be in
production, along with the equipment. This is a huge amount of
square footage. Fifteen hundred of our employees would be in
this giant hangar. They would be dealing with many, many
thousands of parts. It’s an incredible production process that
requires complex scheduling and coordination.
The speed with which an airplane moves through the different
positions is driven by the schedule. If work is not complete at
one position when the schedule says it should move, or if
needed parts don’t arrive in time, the plane moves anyway and
the unfinished work is done at the end. As you can imagine,
taking apart a plane at the end of the line, adding parts, and
then reassembling leads to quality problems and delays. But this
was the way the whole industry did things. No one questioned
it. I suppose it was like third-grade children going to school
from 8:00 to 3:00 and sitting in rooms with teachers. Of course
you do it that way.
As soon as Koz arrived, he made it clear that the priorities for
the C-17 program were to excel in terms of quality, schedule,
and cost, in that order. He really raised the bar, setting a clear
vision of the significantly improved performance we needed. I
bet he talked to everyone about this and got much head-
nodding. “Sure, boss.” And I bet most people wanted that vision
and did try a little harder. But many accepted the existing basic
production system as the only way to do things, and with that
they accepted certain problems as inevitable. The mind-set was,
“Yeah, it would be nice if we were never out of needed parts
but that’s impossible in this industry.” So while people made
small adjustments, the overall production strategy did not come
close to achieving Koz’s raised-bar vision.
Then one day he stood up in a management meeting and made

36. an announcement. “We are not going to move an airplane until
it is complete in position. Quality is number one, so that’s what
we are going to focus on. Until the plane is done and done right,
no movement. Period.”
Everyone thought he was off his rocker. You didn’t do things
this way. I think some of his direct reports, in particular,
thought he was crazy. They were convinced that we would never
be able to deliver on time if we did it this way. Never. Wouldn’t
happen, anybody knows that. Something would always bring
everything to a halt. You’d have employees twiddling their
thumbs at great expense to the company. You might as well
expect cars to be made by secretaries on the fifty-ninth floor of
the Sears building in Chicago.
We had all heard the quality speech before, but here was a guy
telling us that nothing goes anywhere unless it’s properly done.
Koz showed complete conviction that this radical idea was
right. And if his words didn’t win us over, all day long we had
to look at a plane that was not moving until it was complete in a
position. All day long, there it was, not moving. Nope. Sitting
there.
After Koz made his proclamation, things began to change faster.
The fact that out-of-position work would not be tolerated meant
that suddenly having parts arrive on time was critical. Our
procurement guys got motivated like I’d never seen before.
They started coming up with all kinds of new change strategies
for their operation. And—incredible since this couldn’t be
done—they started succeeding in getting our suppliers to
operate in new ways. So we began getting the right parts at the
right time! Overall, people just didn’t want to be the reason that
a plane was held in position for longer than it was supposed to.
They didn’t want to be embarrassed, they didn’t want to hurt the
company, they didn’t want to hurt their careers, and they didn’t
want to let Koz down. So they started breaking through walls.
As evidence began to accumulate that this nutty idea might
actually be working, more people got with the program. More
started finding ways to punch through walls. When they

37. couldn’t do it by themselves, they would come to Koz with
specific ideas, sometimes very clever ideas, for what was
needed and for how problems could be solved. Koz would then
work with them to remove the obstacles. So if it helped for Koz
to talk to the president of a parts company, he’d do it.
Holding the planes in place eliminated all sorts of bad habits.
No longer could we say, “Of course some percentage of parts
won’t arrive on time. That’s just life.” No, that’s not life.
That’s life as we knew it.
To make a long story short, we transformed the place, and, as a
result, quality has gone up and all of our aircraft have not only
been on time, they’ve been early!
To this day people still tell this story, from the shop floor to the
executive offices. “He said the plane would not move. Period.”
If Koz hadn’t had enough respect and credibility among his
direct reports, if they did not feel some sense of urgency or if
they thought the new vision was nonsense, this approach would
have failed. The foundation would not have been there, and
people would have devised many clever ways to undermine the
boss. But with the early steps in the change process having been
done minimally well, and with his actions probably raising the
sense of urgency, a bold strategy helped make the bold vision a
reality.
Imagine what might have happened in this sort of situation—
and often does. Scenario 1: Koz might have never tried
something so bold. He might have continued to talk and talk.
His people would have continued to say “Sure, boss.” No bold
strategies would have been developed. The vision would not
have been achieved. Scenario 2: If Koz became louder and
applied more pressure, the frustration, anger, and fear would
have grown. He might have demanded that people send him new
strategic plans. They could easily have gone into a group
conspiracy. “Logical” plans would have been submitted full of
old ideas. Eventually Koz would have backed off, either
because he was convinced they were right or out of total
frustration. Scenario 3: As the frustration and anger grew in the

38. workforce, preventing the development of new strategies, Koz
might have become more frustrated and angry, creating a nasty
cycle that would, in some way, eventually blow up. Scenario 4:
The pessimists and cynics might have quickly won the day,
probably by convincing sufficient people that Koz was a good
man but naive, or was a bad man seeking only to further his
career. Sometimes we think one of these negative scenarios is
inevitable. But that’s not true.
Notice how it actually worked in this case. The unmoving plane
was a huge visual reminder that new action was needed and
expected or there would be a disaster with who-knew-what
consequences. Change enthusiasts on the staff probably
uncorked champagne. “Now we’re going somewhere!” Others
learned quickly that the same old routine would lead to
disaster—for the plant and maybe for them. So, many people
started trying to develop new strategies. As they saw others
succeeding, their faith increased. As they personally succeeded,
their faith increased more. Some people undoubtedly became
deeply fearful or angry. But a combination of Koz’s unfailing,
visual, daily optimism and some short-term wins pushed enough
employees over to excitement and pride. Enthusiasm,
excitement, and pride spurred even more useful action—and
voilà, a “miracle” occurred.
The Strategic Need for Speed
Speed is one of the most important strategic issues in a leap into
the future. How fast must we go? How much time is minimally
needed in each stage of the process? How much time must you
allow for each wave of change?
Sometimes we just don’t address these issues, leaving the pace
of change to itself, unmanaged. Sometimes we are unrealistic
about what can be done in a period of months, often because we
underestimate all the change that is necessary. Many times,
after a few difficulties in steps 1 and 2, we talk ourselves into
avery slow schedule to be “realistic.” All these approaches to
time can be dangerous.
More often than not, the question of speed is really very simple

39. in today’s world: The answer is to move as fast as possible.
The Body in the Living Room
From Ron Marshall
We had inertia. We needed change, and the pressures on us were
building.
We could have layered this thing into a very deliberate, no
rushing, three- or four-year process: One element of change in
the first year, another in year two. This would reduce the
amount of flux in the organization. Allowing for a four-year
process gives people more time to adjust. We’ve all seen people
who adjust slowly to change. Because a four-year process means
less of a rush, maybe there will be fewer mistakes, and mistakes
can be costly. What if you created too many short-term
problems and lost the support of critical supporters? You move
a little slower and you have the time to give people a sense of
involvement. You might be able to give them more of a sense of
ownership. I could go on, but you get the picture—there are
many pluses for rolling it out over four years.
There is a really good comment that a realtor made to me, years
ago, when I bought my first house in New York. I leveraged like
crazy to buy the house. It was a real stretch. After I closed, the
realtor looked at me and said, “This is a fixer-upper, a real
fixer-upper, a sixty-five-year-old house. Now, you’ve got to
make sure that you make a list of all the things that you want to
get fixed, and get it done in the first six months. Get it done in
six months.” I said, “Are you out of your mind? A sixty-five-
year-old house? I’m broke. By the time I pay the down payment,
the taxes, your lawyer, my lawyer, I’ve got nothing left.
Besides, I’m a disciplined guy. Over five years, I will be able to
do what I want to do.” She said, “No you won’t, because after
six months you get used to it. It seems to fit. You get used to
stepping over the dead body in the living room.”
I still remember this conversation. To my great surprise, she
was right. I was wrong. Anything that didn’t get fixed within
six months didn’t get fixed five years later when I sold the
house.

40. Something like this can happen to companies too. A slow
approach to achieving a vision can require an incredible amount
of discipline inside a big fixer-upper. What can happen is that
the organization just rolls a bit and then gets satisfied and stops.
So if you don’t act quickly, organizational inertia will overcome
you. At the first sign of any success—after you’ve put out the
fire in the oven and you’ve painted your fixer-upper—you’re
tempted to say, “Well, we took care of that.” No more fixing up.
Another problem you can have with a strategy of slow change is
related to the corrosive effect—that drip, drip, drip effect.
There’s a fear, an uncertainty, a doubt that comes into any
change process. “Richard left; am I next?” And if that happens
over four years, you have continual instability, which does not
help.
I think this is a very big issue. You may have the vision, but it’s
crucial to think about how fast you want to move in achieving
it. I guess there are times when slow is a good answer—when
less pressure is on the organization, when the internal resistance
might be overwhelming, when the enterprise is just too big,
when you haven’t a clue at first what to do. But that was not us.
We chose to move fast. In retrospect, it was an important
choice.
Obviously, you can move too fast and find yourself in deep
trouble, perhaps increasing fear and anger to dangerous levels.
This happens. But we should always remember that in a twenty-
first-century world, the pace of external change is only going to
increase. This will generally mean that the internal rate of
change will have to increase too. If you wonder if that’s
possible, consider this: “The Videotape of the Angry Customer”
(step 1) was done in a few days, “Gloves on the Boardroom
Table” (step 1) in a month, “Painting Pictures of the Future”
(step 2) in a few months, the crucial meeting in “General Mollo
and I Were Floating in the Water” (step 2) in one hour, the
crucial part of “The Plane Will Not Move!” (step 3) in a few
weeks, and the vision in “Cost vs. Service” (step 3) in a month.
In all these cases, someone with faith and optimism refused to

41. say, “No, we can’t move any faster because. . . .”
In “The Body,” the selection of a move-quick strategy was
informed by a memorable, vivid story. That story may have
been told by Ron to his people many times. The image would
have become one more element influencing the strategies they
developed. You might think that influence would be trivial.
What can a story do?
An Exercise That Might Help
If a guiding team does not have a vision for their change effort,
or does not have a vision they are satisfied with, try this.
Work with this group to draft an “article” for Fortune magazine
about the results of their change effort, projecting five years
into the future. In the article, talk about the following:
• How the organization is different
• What customers have to say about the company
• What employees are saying
• Performance on relevant indexes
In doing this, be concrete—include quotes from people, actual
numbers, and a clear description of a new product or service or
process.
In general, make it look like a real Fortune article.
You might have one meeting to capture the ideas, and then have
someone write a rough draft of the piece. The draft would be
sent out before a second meeting in which additions, edits, and
so forth would be made. You would decide, depending on the
particulars of your situation, how many sessions there should be
and the length of the sessions.
A good rule of thumb from examining human history, the role of
parables, and the influence of the Christian Bible: Never
underestimate the power of a good story.
Step 3
Get the Vision Right
Create the right vision and strategies to guide action in all of
the remaining stages of change.
What Works
• Trying to see—literally—possible futures

42. • Visions that are so clear that they can be articulated in one
minute or written up on one page
• Visions that are moving—such as a commitment to serving
people
• Strategies that are bold enough to make bold visions a reality
• Paying careful attention to the strategic question of how
quickly to introduce change
What Does Not Work
• Assuming that linear or logical plans and budgets alone
adequately guide behavior when you’re trying to leap into the
future
• Overly analytic, financially based vision exercises
• Visions of slashing costs, which can be emotionally
depressing and anxiety creating
• Giving people fifty-four logical reasons why they need to
create strategies that are bolder than they have ever created
before
Stories to Remember
• Painting Pictures of the Future
• Cost versus Service
• The Plane Will Not Move!
• The Body in the Living Room
Video: Welcome to Week 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=52&v=3F0z0g_
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