Many organizations face common challenges when it comes to achieving quality and high levels of performance. Organizations of all kinds— business, governmental, health care, and educational—create products or services to meet particular sets of consumer needs. To the extent that an organization achieves success and stability, the structures, systems, policies, work practices, and leadership styles that are associated with those accomplishments become accepted and standardized over time. In the short run, these patterns are often a prescription for continued success and vitality. However, in the longer term, these same patterns can lead to rigidity, insulation, lack of innovation, and gradual distancing from the needs of the marketplace and the expectations of consumers.

Over time, changes may also occur in the needs, expectations, or confidence of key consumers or sponsors. Competition, technology, economics, regulatory factors, and other marketplace conditions also...