How to truly change your organization

In March 2024, Bill Anderson, pharma giant Bayer’s CEO, wrote an op-ed in Fortune vowing to bust bureaucracy, slash red tape, and eliminate layers of middle management to create a more agile and innovative enterprise. “Our radical reinvention will liberate our people while cutting 2 billion euros in annual costs by 2026,” he wrote.   I wrote soon after that what Anderson was doing wasn’t genuine transformation but had all the telltale signs of transformation theater: a false sense of...