Rosabeth Moss Kanter speaks with candor and humor, both of which she prescribes for healthy leadership and change in an uncertain future.
At the Zale Corporation Lecture of the Willis M. Tate Distinguished Lecture Series, titled “Leadership in Turbulent Times, Coping with Change in Business, Technology, Communications and the World” Kanter, internationally known business leader, educator and author, spoke on strategies businesses and communities can utilize to incorporate technological innovation.
She spoke from in front of the lectern rather than behind it.
“The world is full of danger and difficulty that’s greater every year,” said Kanter. “We must absorb more change with less certainty and need leaders to take us there.”
In a recent survey she conducted, the most popular answer for the choice of leadership was children.
The traits they lead with are affection, curiosity, energy and new ideas.
These are powerful traits but businesses bound by rules and close supervision render workers powerless. Kanter believes that in times of uncertainty leaders must empower workers and make them feel safe.
In coping with an unclear future she sees two patterns, the pacesetters and the laggards. Laggards respond to adversity with denial, often rule bound with the arrogance of success. They then slip into anger and blame. Pacesetters respond with curiosity and open dialogue, empowering and reducing resistance to change.
“[Intellectual] curiosity is an undervalued quality of leaders,” she said, speaking of both corporations and communities.
Kanter said laggards also respond with superficial change, like homeland security and color-coded threat.
“I think of this as putting lipstick on a bulldog,” she said.
Pacesetters challenge assumptions with kaleidoscopic thinking – the freedom to put the same pieces of a pattern together in a different way.
“It’s often not reality that’s fixed, it’s our view of reality,” said Kanter. “Patterns lock us into place and make it difficult to change.”
Her latest book is titled Evolve!: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow.
Kanter graduated from Bryn Mawr and received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan in 1967. She has also received 19 honorary doctoral degrees. Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
She writes and has served as editor for the Harvard Business Review.
Kanter is one of the most prolific management scholars writing today. She is the author or co-author of over 300 articles and 13 books, including such bestsellers as The Change Masters, Men and Women of the Corporation, When Giants Learn to Dance, The Challenge of Organizational Change, World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy, and the co-edited collection Innovation.
On the Frontiers of Management consists of the articles she has written over the years for The Harvard Business Review.
Kanter is an internationally known business leader, award-winning author, and expert on strategy, innovation, and the management of change. She advises major corporations and governments worldwide.
Considered one of the most prominent business speakers and strategy consultants in the world, she has addressed trade associations, civic groups, and national conventions in nearly every U.S. state and in over 20 countries, sharing the stage with the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the U.S., Great Britain, Norway, Malaysia, Peru, and Venezuela. She has consulted for many prominent companies, such as General Motors, Bell Atlantic and IBM.
The next lecture in the 2002-03 season will host paleontologist Paul Sereno on Dec. 10. Sereno is the discoverer of the supercroc.
