Guiding Coalition Quotes

A guiding coalition made up only of managers—even superb managers who are wonderful people—will cause major change efforts to fail.

When people fail to develop the coalition needed to guide change, the most common reason is that down deep they really don’t think a transformation is necessary or they don’t think a strong team is needed to direct the change. Skill at team building is rarely the central problem.

The steps are: establishing a sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering a broad base of people to take action, generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the culture.

Her approach, guided by Mook and informed by the demands of winning the primary, was to build a coalition focused on core strengths: African Americans, Latinos, college-educated whites, and women. But the more she catered to them, the more she pushed away other segments of the electorate.

The typical goal that binds individuals together on guiding change coalitions is a commitment to excellence, a real desire to make their organizations perform to the very highest levels possible. Reengineering, acquisitions, and cultural change efforts often fail because that desire is missing. Instead, one finds people committed to their own departments, divisions, friends, or careers.

A guiding coalition with good managers but poor leaders will not succeed. A managerial mindset will develop plans, not vision; it will vastly undercommunicate the need for and direction of change; and it will control rather than empower people.

At senior levels in most organizations, people have large egos. But unless they also have a realistic sense of their weaknesses and limitations, unless they can appreciate complementary strengths in others, and unless they can subjugate their immediate interests to some greater goal, they will probably contribute about as much to a guiding coalition as does nuclear waste. If such a person is the central player in the coalition, you can usually kiss teamwork and a dramatic transformation good-bye.

The importance of the Buchanan campaign lies not in its capacity to win the nomination or the national election but in its organization of those forces into a coherent political coalition,” he wrote. “That coalition includes the remnants of the ‘Old Right,’ as well as various single-issue constituencies (pro-lifers, anti-immigration activists, protectionists) to which Buchanan is one of the few voices to speak.” For Francis, Buchanan had begun a process that would illuminate “new social forces that only now are forming a common political consciousness

Failure here is usually associated with underestimating the difficulties in producing change and thus the importance of a strong guiding coalition.

If progressive deep frames had been articulated and present in the public mind, the idea of a “war on terror” never would have made sense. If we viewed our strength as our diplomatic ability to forge international consensus and coalitions, and if we recognized that killing and maiming civilians through military action creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terrorism, we wouldn’t have looked to our military to solve the problem. Had progressive deep frames been prevalent at the time of 9/11, Americans would have taken “war on terror” as a powerful metaphor but not a literal guide to action, like the “war on poverty.” They would have seen it as a major crime problem—like international organized crime—and sought to bring these criminals to justice by the means that work best, like tracing bank accounts, placing spies in their organizations, and so on. It

• Launched Real Time Talent, one of the most innovative workforce development initiatives in the country. It links the curriculum and training for more than four hundred thousand postsecondary students with the skill requirements of employers in the state (RealTimeTalentMN.org). • Created the Business Bridge, which facilitates connections between the procurement functions of large corporations and smaller potential suppliers located in the region. As a result of this effort, participating businesses added more than $1 billion to their spending with local businesses in two years—a year ahead of their goal. • Helped to build the case for investing more aggressively in higher education. By strengthening relationships between business and higher education leaders, and using a fact-based set of findings to justify investing more than an incremental amount, a coalition organized by Itasca helped increase spending in the state by more than $250 million annually. That’s not bad for a group of people with no budget, no office, no charter, virtually no Internet presence, virtually no staff—but a huge abundance of trust.

Japan, a country that had done its best to have no contact with strangers and to seal out the rest of the world. Its economy and politics were dominated by feudal agriculture and a Confucian hierarchical social structure, and they were steadily declining. Merchants were the lowest social class, and trading with foreigners was actually forbidden except for limited contact with China and the Dutch. But then Japan had an unexpected encounter with a stranger—Commodore Matthew Perry—who burst in on July 8, 1853, demanding that Japan’s ports be open to America for trade and insisting on better treatment for shipwrecked sailors. His demands were rebuffed, but Perry came back a year later with a bigger fleet and more firepower. He explained to the Japanese the virtues of trading with other countries, and eventually they signed the Treaty of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854, opening the Japanese market to foreign trade and ending two hundred years of near isolation. The encounter shocked the Japanese political elites, forcing them to realize just how far behind the United States and other Western nations Japan had fallen in military technology. This realization set in motion an internal revolution that toppled the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Tokyo in the name of the emperor since 1603, and brought Emperor Meiji, and a coalition of reformers, in his place. They chose adaptation by learning from those who had defeated them. They launched a political, economic, and social transformation of Japan, based on the notion that if they wanted to be as strong as the West they had to break from their current cultural norms and make a wholesale adoption of Western science, technology, engineering, education, art, literature, and even clothing and architecture. It turned out to be more difficult than they thought, but the net result was that by the late nineteenth century Japan had built itself into a major industrial power with the heft to not only reverse the unequal economic treaties imposed on it by Western powers but actually defeat one of those powers—Russia—in a war in 1905. The Meiji Restoration made Japan not only more resilient but also more powerful.

In both small and large organizations, a successful guiding team may consist of only three to five people during the first year of a renewal effort. But in big companies, the coalition needs to grow to the 20 to 50 range before much progress can be made in phase three and beyond.

A CEO is royalty when at home, enjoying hierarchical deference within the internal ecosystem of their organization. But a CEO courting other CEOs to join a coalition is a monarch visiting a different kingdom. Within their own organization, a CEO who embraces a servant-leader approach motivates subordinates by the demonstration of care and humility. But this servant-leadership only counts when you have authority to sacrifice. A stranger has no such power in a foreign land. It should therefore come as no surprise that successful corporate leaders struggle to align nascent ecosystems, where their authority does not exist. The guiding rulebook here must shift from that of authority to that of diplomacy.

There, he assembled a coalition of twelve power-hungry Russian princes and attacked Kiev,

The effect of the pecuniary interest and the pecuniary habit of mind upon the growth of institutions is seen in those enactments and conventions that make for security of property, enforcement of contracts, facility of pecuniary transactions, vested interests. Of such bearing are changes affecting bankruptcy and receiverships, limited liability, banking and currency, coalitions of labourers or employers, trusts and pools. The community's institutional furniture of this kind is of immediate consequence only to the propertied classes, and in proportion as they are propertied; that is to say, in proportion as they are to be ranked with the leisure class. But indirectly these conventions of business life are of the gravest consequence for the industrial process and for the life of the community. And in guiding the institutional growth in this respect, the pecuniary classes, therefore, serve a purpose of the most serious importance to the community, not only in the conservation of the accepted social scheme, but also in shaping the industrial process proper. The immediate end of this pecuniary institutional structure and of its amelioration is the greater facility of peaceable and orderly exploitation; but its remoter effects far outrun this immediate object. Not only does the more facile conduct of business permit industry and extra-industrial life to go on with less perturbation; but the resulting elimination of disturbances and complications calling for an exercise of astute discrimination in everyday affairs acts to make the pecuniary class itself superfluous. As fact as pecuniary transactions are reduced to routine, the captain of industry can be dispensed with. This consummation, it is needless to say, lies yet in the indefinite future. The ameliorations wrought in favour of the pecuniary interest in modern institutions tend, in another field, to substitute the 'soulless' joint-stock corporation for the captain, and so they make also for the dispensability of the great leisure-class function of ownership. Indirectly, therefore, the bent given to the growth of economic institutions by the leisure-class influence is of very considerable industrial consequence.

2. Form a guiding coalition. Effectively leading change requires a community of people, a group aligned on mission and values and committed to the future of the organization. Nehemiah enlisted the wisdom and help of others. He invited others to participate in leading the effort to rebuild the wall. As you diagnose the culture in your church, do not lead alone. Change will not happen with one lone voice. It is foolish for leaders to attempt to lead alone, and insanity for leaders to attempt to lead change alone. 3. Develop a vision and strategy. Vision attracts people and drives action. Without owning and articulating a compelling vision for the future, leaders are not leading. The vision Nehemiah articulated to the people was simple and compelling: “Let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.” Nehemiah wisely rooted the action of building the wall with visionary language: “We are the people of God and should not be in disgrace.” The vision to build leaders is more challenging than building a wall, but the motivation is the same: “We are the people of God. We must spread His fame to all spheres of life and to the ends of the earth.” 4. Communicate the vision. Possessing a vision for change is not sufficient; the vision must be communicated effectively. Without great communication, a vision is a mere dream. Nehemiah communicated the vision personally through behavior and to others through his words. Besides his communication, Nehemiah embodied the vision. His commitment to it was clear to all. He traveled many miles and risked much to be in Jerusalem instigating change. He continued to press on toward the completion of the vision despite ridicule (Neh. 6:3). Vision is stifled when the leader preaches something different than he lives. If a church is going to effectively communicate the vision to develop and deploy leaders, this vision must own the leaders. It must compel you to personally pour your life into others.

Dozens of bankers, industrialists, and businessmen delivered a signed petition to President Hindenburg requesting him to appoint Hitler as chancellor, which would form a de facto coalition government.

It was there, during the 1960s, that his evolution into a firebrand revolutionary began. He became a vocal leader in the emerging Chicano movement. He joined black student activist Larry Gossett, Native American leader Bernie Whitebear, and Asian American leader Bob Santos to create multiracial coalitions for justice in education, policing, immigration, and other issues. Together they became masters of organizing and direct action. The so-called Four Amigos were bonded by personal chemistry. But they also recognized that in predominantly white Seattle, they were stronger together.

we both have a deep skepticism of and contempt for those who would fixate on race and gender alone as a way to distract from the war-making and economic rigging that has proved so destructive for working class people of all races. We have nothing but disgust for those who would use identity as a wedge to divide natural allies from one another in order to maintain the status quo. After all, throughout American history, cynical politicians have weaponized race and gender to turn our working class citizens against one another, rendering them powerless. Because a true multi-racial working class coalition would be an unstoppable force, and no donor or multi-national corporation could stop them. The wealthy know quite well that they share class interests regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation. Take a look at a Manhattan cocktail party and you’ll see plenty of “bipartisanship” which strangely has the same interest.