Lessons in Leadership and Planned Change: The Chan Koh Story

By Gilmore Crosby and Julian Goh

Kurt Lewin's methods of planned change and Edwin Friedman's self-differentiated leadership are blended together and illuminated through the true story of legendary Malaysian businessman Chan Koh. Crafted as a workbook with quizzes and self-assessment worksheets, this is a concise and entertaining organization development masterpiece. The

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crosby & Associates
• Release date: Apr 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087882819

Gilmore Crosby

Gil Crosby has been an Organization and Leadership Development Professional since 1984. Mr. Crosby has a unique ability to connect with people from all walks of life, from the top of an organization to the bottom, in multiple industries, and in cultures all over the globe. While drawing on many sources, Mr. Crosby's methods are especially rooted in Kurt Lewin's action research methods, and Edwin Friedman's systems thinking. Crosby's application of Lewin's T-group method, pioneered by his father, Robert P. Crosby, provides a catalyst for deep and lasting individual and systemic change. His fourth OD book, "Planned Change: Why Kurt Lewin's Social Science is what you need for Business Performance, Change Management & Social Change," will be available soon. Mr. Crosby, while based in the US, has been blessed with a plethora of work in Jamaica and elsewhere, and is happily married to a Jamaican. His clear thinking and strong track record of measurable results keep him in demand as a speaker, coach, author and consultant.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 CrosbyOD Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from CrosbyOD Publishing.

ISBN 978-1-0878-4812-9

ISBN 978-1-0878-8281-9 (e-book)

Book Layout and Design: Chris and Gilmore Crosby

Cover Design: Chris and Gilmore Crosby

Cover photo: Chan Koh

Translations: Julian Goh

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Self-Differentiated Leadership

Chapter 2: The Chan Koh Story

Chapter 3: Worksheet 1—Self Differentiated Leadership

Chapter 4: Kurt Lewin’s Planned Change

Chapter 5: Worksheet 2—Planned Change

Appendix A: The PECO Nuclear Turnaround

Appendix B: The Rest of the Chan Story

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

For close to a decade Julian Goh and I have envisioned a collaboration from his home in Kuching, on the island of Borneo, in Malaysia, and my home in the United States. We are both organization development (OD) practitioners, having met in an online professional forum. Julian is the first to admit that I am the elder and more experienced in our profession, but his passion and his persistence are unequaled. Together we have written proposals, planned seminars, and dreamed various dreams for collaboration, none of which came to fruition until he suggested this project.

Our book takes a history revered in Malaysia and uses it as an illustration of leadership and organization development principles. The theoretical underpinnings come from the planned change methods of Kurt Lewin, the father of our profession, and Edwin Friedman, a family systems therapist who established a profound yet practical model of leadership. As always, I must acknowledge my own father, Robert P. Crosby, who at the time of this writing is still a sharp minded OD master. He in turn was mentored by Ronald Lippitt, a protégé of Kurt Lewin’s, and I am proud and fortunate to be in that same line of professional lineage.

As with all of my books I give thanks to my brother Chris, for his helpful suggestions about the content, and especially for his patience with me and his attention to detail as we prepared the manuscript for production.

I tip my hat and bow to Lee Zhen Yuan, who wrote the original version of the story of Chan Koh that is written in these pages, and to Julian Goh for translating that story and for guiding me as I attempt to write this cross-cultural piece with the respect it deserves.

Finally, I give thanks to Chan Koh, for leading the extraordinary life that created this possibility, and to his ancestors and descendants.

Introduction

Despite all that has been written on the subject, the premise of this book, like my earlier book, Leadership Can Be Learned, is that leadership is poorly understood because human systems are poorly understood. Like the paradigms of old, which were eventually discarded—flat earth, earth at the center of the universe, and so on—most people are trapped in a limiting paradigm regarding human systems. Problems are understood as clashes of personality, and blame is directed at the superficial level of individuals, groups, and organization structure. The result is hardly more sophisticated than a soap opera. The true root cause is overlooked, and hence perpetuated.

There is a way out, scientifically proven, consistently replicated, and yet little known. This book follows that path, already blazed by pioneers such as Kurt Lewin, the social scientist who laid clear and reliable guidelines for leading change, Edwin Friedman, the family systems therapist who articulated a simple yet powerful approach to leadership, my father, Robert P Crosby, who took Lewin’s methods and turned them into a lifetime of practice, and Chan Koh, who without the benefit of any of these sources, lived a life that demonstrates their principles.

An important premise of this book is that authority is part of the human condition, is an essential ingredient, and yet everybody has authority issues. We all start life totally dependent on the adults who raise us, and our beliefs, emotions, and behavioral habits regarding authority are forged in that early experience. Despite the universal presence of authority relationships in human families and institutions, many people go through life in denial, or at least unaware, of their biases about authority. Even those teaching and writing about leadership (including me) have authority issues. Fortunately, Lewin, Friedman, my father, and Chan Koh all model the effective use of authority.

In contrast, many in my profession of organization development have projected their authority issues in the form of values and theories. They have applauded each other as they advocate for decades for flat organizations, self-organizing organizations, leaderless teams, servant leadership, upside-down organizations, and a plethora of other weakly formulated and unproven approaches. People listen to these utopian ideas because they are seeking a cure for the conflicts, convoluted communication, and inefficiencies that often emerge between leaders and subordinates. Tom Peters, for example, author of In Search of Excellence, heaped praise on the Uddevalla Volvo plant for opening its doors with leaderless teams. His book was a best seller. Sadly, for the people who worked there, the year his book was published the plant had to shut its doors due to low productivity/high cost production. That did not get the same bestselling publicity.

This is not to say that you can’t make flat structures work. However, to do so, you need even more clarity and maturity about authority. You have to know who will decide what, how, and by when, and you need everyone as aligned as possible in support of the authority structure in your system. You also need systems thinking. Starting with yourself, you must lead toward a high-performance culture. Without such clarity, even in the simple structure of a hierarchy, you will have chaos.

Friedman’s leadership theory, blended with Kurt Lewin’s social science principles of leadership, offers a superior model precisely because it takes our authority issues into account. In addition, no other model is as rooted in research. These practical and reliable methods guide each person in how to adjust and continually become a more effective and mature leader.

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