Instead, when successful transformations have occurred, it has almost always been the result of leaders who offer inspiring visions and values, identify clear goals, and then provide the context and opportunity for those below them to participate in the design and implementation of the actual business of change. That’s why, in general, leaders of large corporations have moved away from top-down “planned change,” and, instead, adopted a values-based, decentralized approach to organizational transformation.

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Andrew Grove, a man who survived the Nazis, the Communists, scarlet fever, prostate cancer and Bill Gates to run what was briefly one of the world’s five most valuable companies, is saddled with a disease that will eventually rob him of control over his body. But before it debilitates him, Grove is going to fight. Over the past eight years Grove has immersed himself in the minutiae of the disease and has used his money and his stature to agitate for more and faster research on the neurology of Parkinson’s. “You can’t go close to this and not get angry,” says Grove. “There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little.”

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