by Clayton M. Christensen, Matt Marx, and Howard H. Stevenson
Managers can use a variety of carrots and sticks to encourage people to work together and accomplish change. Their ability to get results depends on selecting tools that match the circumstances they face.

T
JIM FRAZIER

the primary task of management is to get people to work together in a systematic way. Like orchestra conductors, managers direct the talents and actions of various players to produce a desired result. It’s a complicated job, and it becomes much more so when managers are trying to get people to change, rather than continue with the status quo. Even the best CEOs can stumble in their attempts to encourage people to work together toward a new corporate goal. In 1999, for example, Procter & Gamble’s Durk Jager, a highly regarded insider who had recently been promoted to CEO, announced Organization 2005, a restructuring
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T h e To o l s o f Co o p e rat i o n a n d C h a n g e

Extent to which people agree on what they want

program that promised to change P&G’s culture. However, not everyone at P&G agreed that such sweeping change was necessary or that the way to achieve it was to reduce investments in the company’s core brands in order to fund radical, new products. The organization rebelled, and Jager was forced to resign only 17 months after taking the helm. The root cause of Jager’s very public failure was that he didn’t induce P&G employees to cooperate–a requirement of all change campaigns. To achieve such cooperation, managers have a wide variety of tools at their disposal, such as financial incentives, motivational speeches, training programs, and outright threats. But although most competent managers have a good grasp of what cooperation tools are available, we’ve observed that they may be less sure about which to use. The effectiveness of a given tool