Getting Bigger by Growing Smaller: A New Growth Model for Corporate America

Chapter 4. Resistance to Change—Ways to Leverage the Concrete Middle

Although CEO compensation may have produced undesirable behaviors during the late 1990s, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the resistance of middle management to change, or the inability to challenge the status quo, equally hampered the long-term success of many firms. The tendency of corporate managers to build in a conservative bias against new ways of doing business or expansion is well known. This tendency is so strong that it hampers new ventures and is one reason that the SEU model may encourage growth by isolating the new idea from the old hard-line bureaucratic management. This chapter will describe the problem and why the SEU model can also be used to help change ...