When Leaders Change Their Organizations Follow
a review of
“The Last Word on Power: Executive Re-Invention for Leaders Who Must Make the Impossible Happen,” by Tracy Goss
New York: Doubleday, 1996, 255 pages
A group of executive coaches I know of is re-reading and discussing this 1996 book about helping leaders transform their organizations and themselves. They continue to be informed by Tracy Goss, a cofounder of the LeadershipCenter for Reinvention, in Austin, Texas,who believes that early on in our adult lives we learn to cope by living with interpretations of events which inhibit our personal and professional development. She claims that from past experience we settle for what we think is possible when we should be living in the present informed by an impossible future.
After reading the book and reflecting on this review, I enjoyed a couple of days with Emily, my oldest granddaughter who, as a high school graduate, seems altogether informed by her declared future. “When I become a famous photographer,” she will say, announcing her intent to have a certain car, home, wardrobe, or whatever. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to live in a present informed by the future. As we age and take on responsibilities, it seems that we inevitably begin to be controlled by the past rather motivated by future possibilities, or impossibilities as Goss puts it.
Goss is writing to business leaders faced with the near impossible challenge of changing their corporate cultures. From her extensive work as an executive coach she’s convinced that change must begin with the leaders themselves. The problem, she observes, is that “If you are a breathing human being, you are resistant to change. Like all your fellow human beings, you are designed to be incapable of starting with a clean sheet of paper.” (14) Thus personal and institutional change is possible only through what she advocates as “re-invention.”
Re-invention is deeper than simply doing things better or differently; it’s all about being rather than doing: “being set free from the constraints and limitations of your own past (including your own past success).” She outlines a series of transformations necessary for executive and organizational re-invention which are part philosophical fatalism, part psychology and part spiritual development.
Whether raising children or leading a corporation she recommends a reality check of fatalism to free parents and leaders from the illusion of being in control of anything.
“One day you will die.
You will be ground up into ashes or lowered into the ground.
Someone with a shovel will through dirt on your face.
You will be, at that time, exactly as satisfied or unsatisfied as you will be.
In the meantime, life won’t follow the pattern of the controls you are trying to put into place.” (100)
For her, re-invention requires that we deliberately forget the accumulated counterproductive interpretations of events or ways of thinking that bind us to the past andprevent bold actions that make the impossible possible. In her mind we tend to conflate the events of our lives with inhibiting interpretations of those events. She warns that as long as we live and think that way we will never get out of the box of limiting expectationswe accept forourselves or that are placed upon us by other people. Goss contends that leaders who “must make the impossible happen,” need a metamorphosis, a transformation that comes not only by embracing the reality of death but also in this life, a death and resurrection experience,to be and do something new.
Much of thisreads more like a secular version of a religious experience than a guide for leadership development. There is no question that most leaders would profit from a dose of humility informed by awareness of their own limitations and mortality. Who would argue that we all would be more effective if we didn’t jump to conclusions based on past experiences? However, no matter how much we try, no self-directed re-invention process or religious experience will give us “a clean sheet of paper.” We can change but we can’t start over. Leadership maturity, as all of life, is about learning from experience and helping others to succeed.
The “last word on power” to the leaders Goss addresses is the possibility of change through re-invention. Her years as an executive coach have taught her that re-invention is never easy and we seldom do it on our own.
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