The Little Book of Big Management Wisdom

QUOTATION 57

GARY HAMEL ON WHY CHANGE SHOULD BE FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Use this to remind you that front-line staff are a vital source of ideas and information.

Gary P. Hamel (b. 1954) is an American academic, management consultant and founder of Strategos, an international management consulting firm based in Chicago. He has written extensively on a range of management issues, including change management. Like Tom Peters and others, he laments the lack of use that managers make of the knowledge and skills of front-line staff:

This extraordinary arrogance that change must start at the top is a way of guaranteeing that change will not happen in most organisations.

Gary P. Hamel

The major reason that change fails is that in many organisations ...