Summary.
How do you hold onto your best change leaders? Promote them. That’s a key finding of my consultancy’s study of 84 major, multiyear change initiatives completed between 1995 and 2005 at 36 Fortune 500 companies. The programs—such as restructuring, reducing costs, globalizing supply chains, creating shared services, and implementing Six Sigma—were among those that figure prominently in companies’ annual reports.