ABSTRACT
In Chapter 11 we looked at the importance of leadership in quality improvement and in Chapter 12 at the need for leadership in ensuring that improvements are made by using the creativity of the people you lead to ensure that the organization can be innovative in its processes, products and services. In this final chapter we will focus on the need for leadership in enabling change to occur, not just the incremental changes that are central to quality improvement but the step changes that organizations have to make periodically, where every element of the way you work may be shaken up.
In the early 1990s, there was a period when many organizations were keen on ‘business process re-engineering’ or BPR, a name that was coined by two American authors1. Although their ideas were sound, the way that they were popularized and adopted was not, and many organizations made some serious mistakes in the fundamental changes they made to the way that they worked. In this chapter we will look at BPR and why it offers some sensible guidance on how to approach change. But before doing so, we will look at what the pressures are for change, and then, having explored BPR, what you need to be able to do to lead change successfully.
