(Haas School of Business: Berkeley, CA) -- Successful senior leadership depends on the collective effectiveness of other leaders throughout the organizational hierarchy, according to a study paper, “How leadership matters: The effects of leaders’ alignment on strategy implementation” published in The Leadership Quarterly (February 2010). The research found that 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 support consistency exists.

“Effective change in organizations is illusive—most organizations fail to achieve the performance outcomes to which they aspired within an anticipated time frame, if ever,” says co-author of the paper, Jennifer A. Chatman, Paul J. Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. “Our research shows that effective change is less about the mechanics of the change—what new technology should be put in place, what procedures should be followed—and more about how committed leaders across all levels are to the change. We concluded that this suggests that CEOs would be wise to spend time ensuring that their leaders down the ranks are fully informed and committed before embarking on major change efforts.”

“How leadership matters: The effects of leaders’ alignment on strategy implementation,” is written by three organizational behavior professors including Chatman, who is also chair of the Haas Management of Organizations Group; Charles A. O’Reilly, professor, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University; and David F. Caldwell, professor, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. Additional co-authors include William Self, Haas Ph.D. candidate, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and Margaret Lapiz, vice president of strategy and implementation of The Permanente Medical Group.

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 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 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 it. “When there was disagreement about the strategy, or leaders were seen as ineffective, performance was lower,” according to the paper.

View the abstract of the published paper at www.sciencedirect.com.