David A. Garvin
David A. Garvin
C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration
| Unit | General Management |
|---|---|
| Contact | (617) 495-6280 Send E-Mail |
| Interests | general management, management processes, managerial skills, organizational change and transformation, organizational learning, more > |
| Overview | Biography | Publications & Course Materials | Current Research | Areas of Interest |
David A. Garvin is the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. He joined the Business School faculty in 1979 and has since then taught courses in leadership, general management, and operations in the MBA and Advanced Management programs, as well as serving as chair of the Elective Curriculum and faculty chair of the School's Teaching and Learning Center. He has also taught in executive education programs and consulted for over fifty organizations around the globe, including Biogen Idec, Booz-Allen & Hamilton, BP, Frito-Lay, Gillette, L. L. Bean, 3M, Mitsubishi, Morgan Stanley, Mueller, Novartis, RPG, Seagate, and the U.S. Forest Service.
Featured Work
Change Through Persuasion
By David A. Garvin and Michael A. Roberto, Harvard Business Review, February, 2005
Faced with the need for a massive change, most managers respond predictably. They revamp the organization's strategy, shift around staff, and root out inefficiencies. They then wait patiently for performance to improve—only to be bitterly disappointed because they've failed to prepare employees adequately for the change. In this article, the authors contend that to make change stick, leaders must conduct an effective persuasion campaign—one that begins weeks or months before the turnaround plan is set in concrete. Like a political campaign, a persuasion campaign is largely one of differentiation from the past.
Turnaround leaders must convince people that the organization is truly on its deathbed—or, at the very least, that radical changes are required if the organization is to survive and thrive. (This is a particularly difficult challenge when years of persistent problems have been accompanied by few changes in the status quo.) And they must demonstrate through word and deed that they are the right leaders with the right plan.
Accomplishing all this calls for a four-part communications strategy. Prior to announcing a turnaround plan, leaders need to set the stage for employees' acceptance of it. At the time of delivery, they must present a framework through which employees can interpret information and messages about the plan. As time passes, they must manage the mood so that employees' emotional states support implementation and follow-through. And at critical intervals, they must provide reinforcement to ensure that the desired changes take hold and that there's no backsliding. Using the example of the dramatic turnaround at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the authors elucidate the inner workings of a successful change effort.
Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work
By David A. Garvin, Harvard Business School Press, 2000
Most managers today understand the value of building a learning organization. Their goal is to leverage knowledge and make it a key corporate asset, yet they remain uncertain about how best to get started. What they lack are guidelines and tools that transform abstract theory—the learning organization as an ideal-into hands-on implementation. For the first time in Learning in Action, David Garvin helps managers make the leap from theory to proven practice.
Garvin argues that at the heart of organizational learning lies a set of processes that can be designed, deployed, and led. He starts by describing the basic steps in every learning process-acquiring, interpreting, and applying knowledge—then examines the critical challenges facing managers at each of these stages and the various ways the challenges can be met. Drawing on decades of scholarship and a wealth of examples from a wide range of fields, Garvin next introduces three modes of learning—intelligence gathering, experience, and experimentation—and shows how each mode is most effectively deployed. These approaches are brought to life in complete, richly detailed case studies of learning in action at organizations such as Xerox, L. L. Bean, the U. S. Army, and GE. The book concludes with a discussion of the leadership role that senior executives must play to make learning a day-to-day reality in their organizations..