Effective Senior Leadership and Strategies Depend on Leaders at All Levels of an Organization
Charles A. O'Reilly, David F. Caldwell, Jennifer A. Chatman, Margaret Lapiz and William Self
The Leadership Quarterly, January 2010
Available
online (abstract)
Successful senior leadership depends on the collective effectiveness of other leaders throughout the organizational hierarchy, according to a study co-authored by Professor Jennifer Chatman at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. The study is published in The Leadership Quarterly.
The research found when leaders across levels of an organization consistently support a particular change initiative, the organization is likely to realize the performance benefits of the change more quickly and more completely than if less consistency exists.
Researchers studied strategy implementation at Kaiser Permanente, a large health care organization with more than one million members, 300 physicians, and 19 medical centers or clinics. Faced with increased competition, the organization established a new strategy focused on quality and service, rather than cost. The plan involved offering tangible new resources such as a new scheduling system and redesigned call centers. A second phase sought to improve the physician-patient relationship and communication. The overall measurement of success: improved patient satisfaction. The study used data from both physician and patient satisfaction surveys to measure how well the new strategy worked.
The strategy included new improvements in staffing and appointment services to enable physicians to be more responsive to patient needs. The study also measured the strategy’s effectiveness by the leaders’ ability to communicate to employees why patient satisfaction was critical to the organization’s success -- because it had not been a top priority in the past.
The results indicated that the more effective both the CEO and head of a department are perceived to be; the more physicians supported the change in strategy. Effectiveness was measured by the degree to which the leader articulated a clear strategy, set a vision, provided measurable objectives, rewarded progress in the change effort, dealt with resistance, and motivated people to change.
Moreover, the data showed that leaders are more likely to be effective in getting employees to achieve organizational objectives – such as patient satisfaction – when the employees are shown that their leaders are united in supporting the strategy. Supporting the strategy means reinforcing it by allocating resources, addressing any opposition or resistance, and convincing employees that the new initiative is important and in their best interest to support.
