SIX BATTERIES OF CHANGE 12 Really? Another model for change? Getting an organization back on track and/or changing its course is always chal- lenging. Managers try to instill new directions for their companies, but most of them fail to realize the strategic goals they have set. This is surprising, as there is plenty of help out there – including thousands of books that offer useful advice and numerous change management consultants. Many of the traditional recipes for success have lost much of their value, though, as firms increasingly face more turbulent environments. John Kotter, Harvard Business School authority on change and inventor of the famous Eight-Step Model For Leading Change, acknowledges that traditional change tools can deal with tac- tical and strategic issues in a changing world only up to a point. These tools and approaches are effective when it is clear that you need to move from point A to a well-defined point B, and when the distance between the two points is not enor- mous.2 That linear world is gone. With that insight, it becomes dangerous to see change as a top-down, sequential process. As Figure 1 suggests, it’s no longer a top team who dictates what has to happen; meaningful activity is taking place at the grassroots level. Managers and employees at all levels are experimenting, and their orders and instructions are increasingly ambiguous. Companies today need to be ambidex- trous: efficient in managing today’s business and adaptive to tomorrow’s demands. The sequential, linear approach tends to look at managing change as a primarily rational process, overlooking the importance of the emotional side – for success- fully implementing or dealing with change today is largely about influencing and convincing people. Employees of today have a habit of not conforming to the ra- tional arguments and orders of top managers. Change is much more unpredictable than we often take for granted.