MOST US CORPORATE INITIATIVES FAIL
A recent survey of over 50 senior executives, most with decades of leadership experience in US-based corporations, revealed the following shocking opinions:
Less than one-third of corporate initiatives had a significant impact lasting more than 18 months. Most employees had no understanding of the business purpose of these corporate initiatives. Only a small minority of employees knew what was expected of them to carry out the initiatives. Very few employees were committed to the corporate initiatives. More shocking is that very few of the executives who reviewed these findings were surprised by them. It appears to be the norm that corporate initiatives, often begun with huge investments and lots of fanfare, simply don't work.
John Eggert's book, Leading Through Ideas, provides a practical framework for analyzing and assessing the risks to the successful implementation of corporate initiatives and other ideas in the corporate context. More important, the book provides practical, common-sense approaches to mitigate these risks.
The last two chapters extend the key concepts beyond ideas promoted by organizational initiatives to the idea of "The-Organization-You-Lead" and the idea of "You-as-Leader." Eggert has been researching these issues for over 25 years, initially with in-depth interviews of senior executives and then by testing his findings against his clients' actual business problems. Finally, in preparation for publication of the book, he convened an expert review panel of 63 executives to challenge and test the results of his long-term investigation through a series of surveys, a symposium and other interactions.