Best Practives in Leadership Development & Organization Change 29

would be invited to what appeared to be redundant events. Others wondered
whether opinion leaders were like union committeemen—people whom employ-
ees could take their gripes to and who, in turn, would be expected to be their
voice with management.
Formal leaders dealt with initial resistance by downplaying the opinion leader
list, citing the fact that it was not a perfect process and that involvement of opin-
ion leaders is only one way to create change. Senior managers pointed out that
half of the opinion leaders were also managers. They also reminded them
that the list came directly from employee input, not from them. Coordination
conflicts were worked out by the opinion leaders themselves; they chose the
events or issues that they felt were appropriate for them to participate in.
Our intention from the beginning was to have opinion leader involvement
slightly lag involvement of the chain of command. This is important for two rea-
sons: first, because it is the formal leaders’ job to lead change—and engaging
opinion leaders too soon absolves them of that responsibility. And second,
because giving opinion leaders advance information about change provokes
jealousy—and therefore resistance—from members of the chain of command.
But good intentions don’t always fit reality. Reality at Lockheed Martin was that
many of the senior leaders dragged their feet month after month in implement-
ing actions to involve the chain of command. So here we sat with a few willing
executives like Bill Andersen ready to roll with their opinion leaders while
chain-of-command strategies were caught in a traffic jam. We decided to ignore
our better judgment and get opinion leaders moving. In retrospect we’re not
sure what would have been best. Change got rolling. Some formal leaders got
their feathers ruffled. And in some ways preemptively involving opinion lead-
ers put pressure on lagging executives to get the chain-of-command strategies
off dead center. Whatever we should have done—we clearly advocate that the
chain of command should get significant attention prior to involving opinion
leaders.
As we’ve worked with opinion leaders we’ve found them to be very sensi-
tive to the possibility of being manipulated. Trust and credibility are essential

currency in this relationship. With these, opinion leaders become powerful allies
that help move the rest of the organization toward productive change. Without
trust and credibility, we believe that any time spent with opinion leaders just
makes them more credible opponents to change efforts. Since the rest of the
organization will know that formal leaders have attempted to influence them,
their opinions about the relevance and desirability of change will carry even
more weight. It is important, therefore, to realize that opinion leaders might
walk away from an exchange more negative and cynical, and, if so, they will
carry that message to the rest of the organization.
In the case of Hancock’s company, the challenge of building trust with opin-
ion leaders was particularly vexing. What Hancock wanted to see change was
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behavior. Opinion leaders, in response, made it clear that unless and until they
saw that their formal leaders were willing to change themselves, they would be
less willing to spend their credibility helping to influence others. As senior lead-
ers learned to work with opinion leaders, a virtuous cycle was created in which
leaders demonstrated more openness and trust while opinion leaders practiced
greater directness and candor.
THE IMPACT?
The most important impact of opinion leaders is not in the headlines, it’s in the
cafeteria lines. Opinion leaders reach into every conversation, every meeting,
and every decision made in an organization. The question is: Are they influ-
encing these interactions positively or negatively? Although survey results dra-
matically improved after the leader-as-teacher and opinion leader engagements
took hold, we believe the best way to understand how opinion leaders drive
change is through specific anecdotes.
A classic example of how opinion leaders exert influence led to a company-
wide acceptance of the president’s leader-as-teacher concept. Initially, his senior

staff was ambivalent about this approach and began to slow-roll, the idea. Many
below them, however, were more vocal in their concern. One detractor summed
up what others felt when he said: “We’re managers, not trainers!”
While executives deliberated, the operations area moved ahead to pilot the
concept. As it turned out, the most frequently nominated opinion leader
in the company was in the first operations pilot. He came away convinced that
the training was crucial but that the leader-as-teacher concept was deeply flawed.
After receiving the preparatory training, he reluctantly began to train others. As
he did, his attitude changed, as did his remarks about the leader-as-teacher
approach. In fact, he became such a vocal advocate that he even offered to sub-
stitute for his peers when they needed coverage. While his journey from oppo-
sition to zealot was encouraging, what was more important was the influence it
exerted on the dozens of others who witnessed it.
Although we expected this peer effect, what surprised us was the influence
he wielded upward. In one session in which the senior staff deliberated, once
again, on whether to make a companywide commitment to leader-as-teacher,
Russ Ford, the vice president of operations, described this man’s journey. At the
first mention of his name, those who had been shuffling papers and holding
side conversations stopped. Executives also respected him, and they knew he
was no pushover. As the VP told the story, previously skeptical staff members
began asking genuine questions. At the conclusion, opinions had changed.
Although not even present during the discussion, this opinion leader had
exerted powerful influence.
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Beyond anecdotes, it is always hard to disentangle cause-and-effect in large-
scale organizational change efforts. This case is no different. A large number of
discrete change initiatives were implemented in cascading and overlapping
ways throughout the organization. However, it is possible to examine data that

speak to all change efforts to see whether results are consistent with the timing
of particular interventions. In this case, the regular survey results provide
some insight into the impact of the change effort (see Exhibit 10.3 for survey
findings). Survey results over the first year and half of the change initiative
(measured in April and September of 1998 and February and June of 1999)
indicated no meaningful change in the critical behaviors. This changed on
the December 1999 survey, where statistically significant (p Ͻ .001) and
meaningful shifts in those results were observed companywide.
Although the first opinion leader engagement began in the late spring of
1999, it was during the last six-month period that most activities involving opin-
ion leaders and leader-teacher efforts were carried out. We believe this is more
than coincidence.
Other evidence also pointed to change efforts having their desired impact.
The surveys provided employees with an opportunity to write about recent
changes they noticed at work. These comments did not show evidence
of change consistent with the Workforce Vitality initiative until the leader-as-
teacher and opinion leader efforts were under way. A shift in the tone and num-
ber of positive-change comments started to occur on the fourth survey. Even
more positive changes were noted on the last survey, but this time, they were
specifically attributed to the Workforce Vitality effort. Thus, the timing of
employees’ reports of change matched the changes in the numerical survey
results.
YOU CHANGED THE CULTURE. SO WHAT?
Although it’s always nice to succeed at what you set out to do, sometimes suc-
cess isn’t worth the cost. So, the ultimate question should not be merely, Did
what you do actually change the culture? Unless changing the culture also made
a clear business difference, scarce resources should probably have been put
elsewhere. After all, Hancock wasn’t pursuing culture change for philosoph-
ical or intrinsic reasons. He was convinced that critical behaviors had to change
for the company to survive—to both win the JSF contract and be able to deliver

on that contract. From this perspective, the key questions are both Did the
behavior change? and Did the changed behaviors lead to improved business
performance?
With good engineering discipline, Hancock arranged from the beginning for
good research to help answer these questions. The culture change survey was
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administered approximately every five months. This survey tracked changes in
the critical behaviors. Movement on this metric was an indicator that the culture
had started to shift.
We were able to address the second key question by following changes in
performance in each of eighteen F-16 production units. In this case, we were
able to see whether improvement in these performance metrics was associated
with greater success in holding the targeted crucial conversations (see
Exhibit 10.4). These results indicate that units that are seen as better able to
engage in crucial conversations are more efficient and productive, and produce
higher-quality work.
Although statistical methods can never finally answer the questions about
causality (that is, did improved performance lead to behavior change or did
behavior change lead to improved performance?), the story here is pretty com-
pelling. First of all, leaders announced an intention to influence specific critical
behaviors. Second, they implemented interventions designed to influence
these behaviors. Measurable behavior change followed the implementation
of these interventions. And performance improvement followed change in
behavior. In fact, research with follow-up focus groups indicated that there were
no examples of performance improvement in any unit studied where there was
not also significant improvement in the critical behaviors.
An interesting anecdote: as the evidence of culture change was becoming
clear, LMTAS was going through an assessment for the coveted Shingo prize for

manufacturing excellence. In the end, not only did LMTAS win that prize, but
in awarding the prize, evaluators specifically applauded the breakthrough
approaches to increasing employee involvement described in this chapter.
Did culture change help with the JSF win? There is no concrete way of
answering that question. Did winning the Shingo Prize, Industry Week’s Plant
of the Year award, and most important, demonstrating the ability to lead and
influence an organization toward measurably improved performance help? It’s
hard to think it didn’t.
SUMMARY AND BEST PRACTICES
It is a daunting challenge to attempt to change widely held and deeply
entrenched patterns of behavior across a large and complex organization. And
yet there are times when it is the only path to significantly improved
performance. New strategies or processes are worthless if poorly implemented—
and behavior is the key to effective implementation. Such was the challenge
facing Lockheed Martin.
A few best practices emerge from Lockheed Martin’s successful effort to
change its culture in its successful pursuit of the Joint Strike Fighter contract.
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The major lesson is that a handful of committed leaders can positively influ-
ence thousands of others with the appropriate leverage.
Dain Hancock and his staff prepared themselves for effective influence by
1. Identifying a few critical behaviors that were easy to tie to improved
performance
2. Setting a specific and measurable improvement goal
3. Holding the top two levels of leaders accountable not for supporting
culture change activities, but instead for achieving measurable changes
in critical behaviors
Lockheed Martin leaders gained leverage for influencing 12,000 others by

1. Enabling formal leaders to take responsibility for influencing new
behaviors by having them assume the role of “teacher”
2. Enlisting informal opinion leaders in leading change by identifying
them, listening to them, and involving them in strategic ways
APPENDIX
EVERETT ROGERS
Lessons from Known Studies of Diffusion
Everett Rogers is well known for his systematic study of how new ideas and behav-
iors catch on in large and complex populations. There is evidence of his influence
in words he helped introduced into business usage such as “early adopters” and
“laggards.” What is less known is that he began his academic interest after a sum-
mer job in which, as a county agent, he utterly failed to induce Midwest farmers to
accept free advice on what were irrefutably better ways of farming. He was
stunned.
Through this and similar experiences, Rogers began a systematic exploration
into what came to be known as the diffusion of innovations. He looked at every
kind of new behavior one could try to foster. He examined what encourages doc-
tors to begin using new drugs, what inspires farmers to begin using better farming
techniques, what motivates people to buy a VCR for the first time, how new man-
agement techniques are adopted, how passing fads become popular, and so on. He
examined 3,085 behavior-change studies, and concluded that 84 percent of the
population is unlikely to change its behavior based solely on arguments of merit,
scientific proof, great training, or jazzy media campaigns. The majority of those
who try new behaviors do so because of the influence of a respected peer.
Rogers came to this realization in an interesting way. In reviewing these
3,000ϩ studies, he noticed that in every one of them, change followed an S-
shaped curve. Change begins slowly and progresses grudgingly at first. Gradually
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