MIT Sloan Management Review

Leadership and Organizational Studies

The Leadership Challenge — A Call for the Transformational Leader

By Noel M. Tichy and David O. Ulrich

October 15, 1984

The authors purport that a new brand of leadership — transformational leadership — is the key to revitalizing large U.S. corporations such as General Motors, AT&T, General Electric, just to mention a few. Based on the premise that the pressure for basic organizational change will intensify, not diminish, over the years, they argue that transformational leaders must develop a new vision for the organization, mobilize employees to accept and work toward achieving the new vision, and institutionalize the needed changes. Unless the creation of this breed of leaders becomes a national agenda, the authors are not very optimistic about the revitalization of the U.S. economy. Ed.

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Some optimists are heralding in the age of higher productivity, a transition to a service economy, and a brighter competitive picture for U.S. corporations in world markets. We certainly would like to believe that the future will be brighter, but our temperament is more cautious. We feel that the years it took for most U.S. companies to get “fat and flabby” are not going to be reversed by a crash diet for one or two years. Whether we continue to gradually decline as a world competitive economy will largely be determined by the quality of leadership in the top echelons of our business and government organizations. Thus, it is our belief that now is the time for organizations to change their corporate lifestyles.

To revitalize organizations such as General Motors, American Telephone and Telegraph, General Electric, Honeywell, Ford, Burroughs, Chase Manhattan Bank, Citibank, U.S. Steel, Union Carbide, Texas Instruments, and Control Data — just to mention a few companies currently undergoing major transformations — a new brand of leadership is necessary. Instead of managers who continue to move organizations along historical tracks, the new leaders must transform the organizations and head them down new tracks. What is required of this kind of leader is an ability to help the organization develop a vision of what it can be, to mobilize the organization to accept and... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

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