Leading into Change and Innovation

Abstract

How a leader confronts the concepts of change and innovation can mean the very survival of his or her organization. Does that sound overly dramatic? Here’s a story to illustrate my point. Early on in my auditing career, in the mid-1980s, I worked with a leading maker of over-the-counter cold remedies and other consumer products. The company was publicly traded, but the founding family, a major stockholder, was very active and the CEO was a member of the family. The firm had a terrific line-up of brands and a very strong international distribution network, and everything should have been rosy. But I had been their external auditor for about four years when I started to hear the same worried comment over and over from different departments: The company hadn’t launched a new product in quite a while. The joke was that the research labs were coming up with new cough drop flavors, but no new products.