One of the themes in all our classes is a focus on how successful leaders actually change organizations. Graduates of our Advanced Management Skills Program (our public program offered twice a year) or our internal Corporate Universities learn how leaders like Archie Norman, Jack Welch, or David Marquete (see adjacent book review of Marquete’s turnaround journey aboard a nuclear submarine) successfully transformed change resistant organizations. They also learn how flawed leaders like Carly Fiorina failed in their efforts to transform organizations. The role of leaders in actually leading change from a principled, intellectual and moral position is actually rather recent. This article is about an approach pioneered by Mike Beer at Harvard. Beer, an astute observer of organization behavior, focused on how to help organizations achieve: …sustained high levels of performance through organizing and managing to: (1) implement its strategy, (2) elicit commitment, and (3) enable ongoing learning and change. Building [a High Commitment, High Performance Organization] requiresleaders to make a conscious choice. That choice involves promises; for example, leaders must maintain the firm’s mission and cultural identify, maintain the “psychologicalcontract” on which commitment has been built, and allow employees to have a voice in the affairs of the enterprise. 1 (Emphasis added) Beer’s book is really about the words in italics in the quote above: How to take advantage of the knowledge and intellect of workers in the modern enterprise to radically improve the execution of strategy. He describes it as “speaking truth to power”. At the center of his thinking is how leaders “know” what is going on in their organizations. Years ago, on a walkaround diagnostic visit to the corporate headquarters of Bausch & Lomb, I complimented the new COO on the grandeur of his office. He was only in the position a few months and was, at heart, an operating guy. His answer was, “the walnut walls are great, but I don’t know what is going on ‘out there’ anymore”. The NETMA problem: Nobody ever tells me anything. 1 Michael Beer, High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009