John Mintzberg The Last Word Analysis

John Kotter once said that to be successful at leading, you have to be successful at change. Organizations that think and act like communities are a framework for a set of assumptions that must be in place for change to be possible and successful. In an article titled “The Last Word”, famous management theorist Henry Mintzberg discusses how important it is for companies to remake themselves into a place of engagement, where people are committed to one another and their enterprise, almost as if they’re part of a community. Henry Mintzberg says that next to the problems in the economy lies a crisis much worse. He is referring to the depreciation in companies of community, or people’s sense of belonging to and caring for something larger …show more content…
We are social beings who have a hard time functioning effectively without some sort of social system. I personally find this to be very true. Over the course of working the many jobs that I’ve worked, the ones that I enjoyed working at most had a lot of social activity between coworkers. Developing connections with my coworkers gave me a sense of caring about my work, my colleagues, and my job, as well as giving me more inspiration to work. This is what having a community is all about. Some successful companies that are admired for their community at work are Toyota, Pixar, and Semco. Working for jobs like these, everyone feels like they are part of something and their passion and accomplishments make their community a “magnet” for other like-minded people who may have just gotten their degree (Garvin, 2001). This creates a snowball effect where these types of people are constantly drawn to these community organizations, making these organizations even better. The only tricky part to having a company with a good community, is the issue of how to sustain …show more content…
Many articles and books get the process of change all wrong. Most of them focus on a leadership style where senior managers always form the core. A popular example of this is John Kotter’s article titled “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail”. Kotter’s approach as well as many other similar approaches might work, but for how long? Often times when the driving leader leaves, the employees at the company are left helpless. The right way to rebuild companies is to start from the middle and go outward through middle managers, who bond together to make key changes in their organization (Garvin, 2001). An authority on workplace performance, named Peter Block, once said something that can be related to this middle-out approach. The quote is “Most sustainable improvements in community occur when citizens discover their own power to