Legendary leadership guru Tom Peters weighs in here with thoughts on how leaders effect change in their organizations. Tom's career has carried him from McKinsey to (30 years ago) writing In Search of Excellence to a raft of other books and thousands of speaking engagements around the globe. I first heard Tom in 1985 during the height of the free music to downloadExcellence boom when he spoke to the management team at a hospital where I administered mental health services. Now, as then, his penchant for cutting through jargon and management double-speak sets him apart in a cluttered field.His emphasis on building (and tending) a network of allies addresses head-on the tendency we all have of spending way too much time battling adversaries:

Big change is not about fighting the bad guys. It's about surrounding them with your continuously recruited allies.Success at change: Building a stable of allies. Failure: Pissing and moaning and picking fights.Change agent time distribution: 50% recruiting Allies. 40% tending Allies. 10% other. 0% fighting enemies.Change: Allies do not automatically remain allies. Tend them and do NOT NOT NOT neglect them—the latter is a common sin.

Still more:

Change: Recruit allies 2 or 3 levels "down" ... where the real work is done and from which the system can be indirectly manipulated.Change: "Suck down" for success.

Great advice, even if there are few poly-syllabic words. Wish I had known this decades ago.