It may be a first for a professor who holds a prestigious chair at the Harvard Business School, but for Rosabeth Moss Kanter, it was a logical step—to synthesize her message into a rap song. Kanter has been writing, teaching, and consulting on change for more than two decades. “Why not take this [rap music] and turn it to a positive social purpose—to reclaim this genre from the gutter and elevate it to something that can inspire?”
Kanter sees parallels between hip-hop and the corporate world. “I began to realize that the messages about the culture of business were just as good reaching down into the community. Like the line [in the song] that says, ‘Don’t get trapped in old divisions on a patch of tiny turf.’ I had in mind both the turf battles that go on within bureaucracies and gangs on the street.’”
Charting Change
Through her 15 books and more than 100 articles, Kanter has been charting bureaucratic machinations and internecine corporate wars since the 1970s, when American businesses were hierarchical and those at the top ruled with the mindset of “my way or the highway.” Today the landscape of American business is global, and the hierarchical systems that worked so well in a command-and-control economy are seen as dysfunctional. Organizations operating within this landscape need to evolve new models, new ways to adapt to change. And that’s where Kanter comes in.
Change is hard work. It takes time. We talk about “bold strokes” versus “long marches.” Bold strokes are when leaders issue edicts—to open or close a department, say. But building and creating things of value—that takes long marches . . . and a lot of people volunteering to be followers.
Her book The Change Masters was published in 1983, just as American businesses were on the verge of reawakening from a slump and trying to navigate the new challenges of global competition. In this book, Kanter proclaims a theme that is really a cornerstone of her work: the need to use what is at hand, chiefly people. As she writes,
The issue is to create the conditions that enable companies to take advantage of the good ideas which already exist, by taking better advantage of the talents of their people. By encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship at all levels, by building an environment in which more people feel included, involved and empowered to take initiative, companies as well as individuals can be masters of change instead of its victims.
Prolific Writer
Kanter is a strong essayist. As a former editor of the Harvard Business Review, she knows how to make a point succinctly so that readers, who are probably busy managers, can grasp the basics quickly. In the preface to On the Frontiers of Management, she calls the collection of her articles “an agenda for managerial work.” She continues, “Taken together, [the articles] reinforce a single, timeless message: the importance of providing the tools and conditions that liberate people to use their brainpower to make a difference in a world of constant challenge and change.”
In her essay “A Walk on the Soft Side,” Kanter addresses the inherent difficulties that managers have in dealing with the people side of business. Communications is essential, but in a cross-cultural environment—or today in alliances across companies—open communications can be a genuine challenge, one that leaders as communicators must address. “Leaders still need to listen, carefully, and they need to open the channels for others to talk, listen, contribute, and reflect.” Such communications opens the door to organizational learning, allowing people throughout the enterprise to share best practices.
In this same article, Kanter speaks of American managers’ predisposition to “self-disclosure”—something that their counterparts in Asia and Europe do not have. Open communications thus raises the stakes for leaders: It discloses their shortcomings along with their successes. Yet it is only through collaboration, involving communications, that change can occur. As Kanter writes in another essay, “[T]he best way to lead change is to create conditions that make change natural.” Managers in organizations where change is part of the culture “release the potential of their people to create the future.”
Kanter’s message of empowerment through change, enabling people to think and do for themselves as they turn change into an ally, has earned her many honors—she is a best-selling author, and she has valued consulting relationships, honorary degrees, and multiple leadership awards as well as recognition outside her realm. The Times of London named her “one of the 50 most powerful women in the world.” As a result, Kanter is an extraordinary leadership communicator, one who lives her message through her writing and teaching as well as consulting for both for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises.
E-frontiers
Since Kanter is someone who has concentrated on organizational change, it was only a matter of time before she would explore the revolutions wrought by the Internet. When her book on the topic, E-Volve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow, appeared in 2001, the bloom was already off the trend and dot.coms had become another word for “out of work” or, worse, for an elaborate con game. Even Kanter, a veteran trend observer, was surprised: “I’ve lived through many cycles of enthusiasm for something that gets excessive, swings too far, and all of a sudden is trashed, and then finally it gets incorporated appropriately . . . but I have never lived through a cycle where things turned on their heads so fast.”
While critical of some dot.com excesses, Kanter believes “E-volve! has enduring lessons about change, and it points the way toward key elements of how you run your company differently because it is on the Web, or simply because other companies are.”
Like her other works, E-volve! provides case studies of successful e-enterprises, coupled with survey research. From her studies she has distilled several lessons. One is the nature of e-culture itself. She does not mince words: “E-culture is not lipstick on a bulldog; it is a fundamentally different way of life . . . not just new wardrobe [casual clothes] . . . or a little redecoration.” Under her “requirements of change,” Kanter cites the need for improvisation, the need for partnership networking, and the use of “customer power” as an agent of community building. She redefines “competition for talent” as an avenue for “empowerment” as well as providing a means for employees to learn to do for themselves and to be compensated financially as well as through the values of being part of a larger community.
Qualities of Change Agents
It is in the people part that Kanter returns to her roots as a change agent. Citing the “star performers” in her book, those men and women who not only have adapted to e-culture but are adapting it, she posits “seven qualities of the mind” that are necessary in order to “e-volve.”
All of these qualities are timeless. “Curiosity and imagination,” “communication,” and “sensitivity to the range of human needs” are qualities that are familiar to many. What is different is the need for managers to be “cosmopolitan” and to possess a “grasp of complexity” in order to divine a new culture that takes “conflicting points of view into account.” In points six and seven, Kanter gets to the heart of what it means to be a manager in today’s world. Successful managers will “work with other people as resources not as subordinates” and “lead through the power of their ideas and strength of their voices” rather through position and rank. In short, as Kanter says in an interview, “So my ultimate message is that we need leaders who react to change with curiosity, not denial. We need leaders who empower people—empower them to do the work better, to rethink how the system is designed . . . and who make value choices to use technology to benefit rather than to isolate and dehumanize people.”
Making Certain that the Message Hits Home
According to Kanter, there are four keys that ensure understanding: “simplicity, consistency, repetition, and demonstration.” Simplicity emerges from a “clear but simple message that is meaningful [as well as] understandable and motivational.” Consistency occurs when “all communications and all actions tend to reinforce the same message.” Repetition is necessary “because people never believe it the first, or even the second and third time.” Demonstration comes when leaders “[u]se stories and examples from within the company to make the message tangible and concrete. People remember stories.”
Leaders owe it to their people to keep their messages fresh. “If the basic message—such as mission, vision, values—still fits, then make sure it is communicated in terms that will capture people’s attention as well as their imaginations.” Again, stories are a good way to reinforce the basic message. When circumstances change, leaders must alter their messages. “[D]o a relevance check to see if the message still fits the circumstances. . . . If [it does] not, look for a better way to understand and communicate the challenges facing the organization and the actions required.”
When it comes to addressing bad news, such as a corporate governance crisis, Kanter is direct. “Face the facts, and face the music. Communicate to all constituencies right away—otherwise any messages sound defensive and reactive. Identify actions to solve the problem, and announce them, even if they won’t start right away. Then keep communicating, with frequent updates on revelations and progress.” Keeping things quiet is not a viable strategy: “As we all know, cover-ups or silence often have worse repercussions than the original sin.”
Reaching to the Next Generation
As for the hip-hop scene, Kanter has discovered a new audience. After she plays the song for Harvard alumni and business conferences, she says, “People really go crazy. Parents want to play it for their kids. And the kids themselves, they look at me with new respect.” Self-esteem aside, what Kanter is really doing is serving notice to those in the next generation that if they expect to succeed, they, too, must continue to learn and to innovate—in other words, to change.
Leadership Communications Lessons
Advocate for change. Change is an uncomfortable process. Throughout her life’s work, Kanter has nudged, cajoled, and pushed organizations to find better ways of changing in order to find better ways to function and succeed.
Draw analogies. Find parallels with other businesses. Kanter has consulted and studied a great many organizations in the course of her career, and she draws lessons from each that she shares in her writings.
Share the learning. Leadership is about doing for others. As a teacher, Kanter shares her expertise with her students. She is also active in community affairs, from which her CD rap project emerged.
Live your message. In her work, Kanter has been consistent and constant in her messages about learning new ways to adapt to a rapidly evolving workplace in order to create a better workplace.