Mastering the Challenges of Leading Change

Foreword

Bill HawkinsPresident and CEO, Immucor

Someone once said, “When the rate of external change exceeds the rate of internal change, the end is in sight.” That's a difficult reality for business today because the rate of external change in most industries is dizzyingly fast and accelerating still. Leaders need skills optimized to help people adapt, perform, and innovate in this turbulent environment.

Medtronic, the company where James Dallas and I worked together, operates in health care, by its nature a very dynamic environment. But there was probably no more dynamic period in the company's history than the period we worked together during which I was the CEO and James was the CIO. No situation could better prepare a leader to write a book on change, or even the book on change. James not only had a front-row seat, he was instrumental in helping us control our destiny and zig when everyone else was zagging.

Medtronic's culture is rooted in the five-point mission statement that our founder Earl Bakken wrote in 1960, focused on alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life through innovative medical products. People's lives were dependent on our judgment, our actions, and our values. It was the mission that guided us to do the right thing every day, whether it meant suspending shipment of our number-one product when it fell short of our own performance expectations or increasing our investment in R&D when others were cutting back due to the economic downturn.

James ...