| The Merlin Factor: Leadership and Strategic Intent (2008) | |||||||||||||
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| The principal impediment to changing an organization’s strategic direction is its existing culture: that is, people’s current beliefs about the limits of what is possible. Changing people’s beliefs about the future can produce extraordinary improvements in quality management, technical innovation, customer service, and profitability. This culture-changing process of leadership through a radical strategic vision follows a pattern the author calls, ‘The Merlin Factor’. (The reference is to the legendary magician who lived backward in time’.) The leadership tasks faced by executive ‘Merlins ’ are: (1) Co-Invention, (2) Engagement, and (3) Practice. There is a literature replete with examples of companies that have turned a daring vision in to reality, achieving extraordinary results which defy conventional analysis or prediction. What characteristics distinguish these successfully transformed organizations from those which labor mightily to produce little more than business as usual? One important factor is the possession of a long-term strategic intent that | |||||||||||||
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