Guiding a company through big

changes requires a difficult balancing act. The company’s heritage has to be respected even as
it’s being resisted. It’s often assumed that outside managers are
best suited to lead such an effort,
since they’re not bound by the
company’s historical formula.
Lou Gerstner’s success in turning
IBM around is frequently held up
as evidence of the need for an outsider. I would argue, though, that
Gerstner should be viewed more
as an exception than an example.
Typically, outsiders are so quick
to throw out all the old ways of
working that they end up doing
more harm than good.
The approach I recommend is to
look for new leaders from within
the company but from outside the
core business. These managers,
whom I call inside-outsiders, can
be drawn from the company’s
smaller divisions, from international operations, or from staff
functions. Charles Pilliod, for example, the CEO who led Goodyear into the radial age, was born
and raised in Akron and worked
his entire career with Goodyear