Middle and senior managers are increasingly responsible for rapidly managing and resolving competing claims for the organization's limited resources (financial and human). Doing so requires advanced capabilities at managing cross-functionally and between business units. Critical, therefore, are the sophisticated leadership and action skills required to translate one's technical knowledge into effective actions in order to implement strategy. Equally important are the "systems" managers must design, maintain, and update in order to facilitate the implementation of the firm's strategy. This is essential to realizing corporate renewal, which ultimately it has to do with making change happen.

Thus, leading change processes is a key to achieve personal and business success. Both parties should be interested in this interplay. Managers, whose careers can benefit being acknowledged as transformation agents, and their respective organizations, since they need to innovate and adjust to market dynamics better than their competitors. The tension toward exploring new sources of revenues and implement continuous improvements in the organization does not happen by chance: it is instilled by leaders that understand the importance of change.

Renewal strategies have to overcome and manage resistances to change. On the surface, people are admired by the notion of "progress," "innovation," and "transformation," but what research and management practice has shown is that resistance and organizational inertia delay projects, slow down the implementation, and dilute the expected benefits of the new strategies. Moreover, many company transformations are today forced by the adoption of large-scale digital technologies that incorporate a different view of how company processes should be handled as well as the interactions between the organization and its environments (e.g., customers and suppliers).