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More and more companies struggle with growing competition by introducing improvements into every aspect of performance. But the treadmill keeps moving faster, the companies keep working harder, and results improve slowly or not at all. The problem here is not the improvement programs. The problem is that the whole burden of change typically rests on so few people. Companies achieve real agility only when every function and process--when every person--is able and eager to rise to every challenge. This type and degree of fundamental change, commonly called revitalization or transformation, is what many companies seek but rarely achieve because they have never before identified the factors that produce sustained transformational change. The authors identify three interventions that will restore companies to vital agility and then keep them in good health: incorporating employees fully into the principal business challenges facing the company, leading the organization in a different way in order to sharpen and maintain incorporation and constructive stress, and instilling mental disciplines that will make people behave differently and then help them sustain their new behavior. The authors discovered these basic sources of revitalization by tracking the change efforts of Sears, Roebuck & Company, Royal Dutch Shell, and the United States Army. The organizations used these interventions to alter the way their people experienced their own power and identity, as well as the way they dealt with conflict and learning. As at Sears, Shell, and the U.S. Army, any major shift in those four elements will create a landmark shift in any organization's operating state or culture.

PMID: 10174794