ABSTRACT
The good news is that organizational cultures are not dealt out randomly by the business gods, with some organizations inherently blessed and others doomed. Even better, if they so choose, leaders have more sway than others on the culture within the areas for which they are responsible. Former MIT Sloan School of Management professor Edgar Schein devoted much of his professional life to studying the nuances of organizational culture. One of the more useful components of his work is the identification of various mechanisms which leaders use—both intentionally and unintentionally—to impact culture. The author defines leadership as the ability to engage others to leave a known current state and move towards a presumably better (but unknown) future state. Leading change within an organization is akin to rolling a large boulder up a hill or changing the direction of rotation on a huge flywheel.
