An Agenda for Management Innovation: Denial forces in building a fast changing company

Every business is successful until it’s not. What’s disconcerting, though, is how often top management is surprised when “not” happens. This astonishment, this belated recognition of dramatically changed circumstances, virtually guarantees that the work of renewal will be significantly, if not dangerously, delayed. Denial follows a familiar pattern. Disquieting developments are at first dismissed as implausible or inconsequential, then rationalized away as aberrant or irremediable, then grudgingly mitigated through defensive action, and then finally, though not always, honestly confronted. The recent travails of the music industry provide us with a typical case. Record companies were initially contemptuous of downloaded music. MP3 files were sonically inferior to CDs, and downloading music was a clumsy and time-consuming... [read full story]