Ques. 3.

Elaborate on how the change was led by Henry Fonda keeping

the steps of change management in mind.
Ans. Creating urgency
While others unanimously decided to vote for the boy being guilty, Henry
Fonda insisted on talking and discussing about the case before jumping
onto a conclusion. He stressed upon the point that the verdict is about a
life of an 18-year-old boy and they must just not give a verdict without
even discussing about the boy, his mental and physical status, his
background, the circumstances before and after the murder. He had the
courage and willingness to take a stand against all and discuss these facts
openly. This intrigued most of the men and created a sense of urgency to
have a discussion to try and change their views and prejudices.
Form a powerful coalition
To lead a change, it is necessary to convince others about the change.
Henry Fonda constantly tried persuading others to consider different
perspectives and think about their possibility of occurrence and not just
blindly believe what was presented during the trial and remove prejudices
from their decision. He created a reasonable doubt about the evidences in
each of their minds and was successful in persuading others to change
their stand. Also, he takes help from his fellow jurors with their
experiences as inputs (for example, the juror number 9 who could describe
the nature and intentions of the witness and juror number 5 gave inputs
regarding knife fights) to authenticate his arguments. This is an indication
of forming coalition. He constantly encouraged others to express their
views.
Creating a vision for change
Henry Fonda established a vision to talk about the murder case rather
than get to a decision without discussion. He urged the others to
understand the gravity of the issue and that a kids life depended on their
decision.
Communicating the vision
Fonda used several means to communicate his thoughts to the others
being oral, role-playing and even through his actions. He ensured that his
communication was effective and powerful enough to create a sense of
reasonable doubt in the minds of the other members.
Empowering others to act on the vision and removing obstacles
Fonda opted for a secret ballot as the second ballot option so as to
promote a sense of secrecy among the members. This would enable them
to take an unbiased decision without having to be looked down upon or
shamed by the other members. He asked for the evidences to be brought
back so as to make the people understand the point he was trying to
make.
Create short-term wins
Here, the short term wins, is analogous to Fonda winning arguments and
proving his points one by one. He was able to question each of the

evidences and created doubts about them. On the surface, the four main
evidences unique knife, woman witnessing the murder, the old man
hearing the buy shout and watch him run down the stairs and the boys
memory regarding the movie, indicated the boy being guilty. However,
Henry Fonda was able to question these one by one and by analysing
them deeply with proper reasoning, he was able to prove that none of
them directly lead to the conclusion of the boy being guilty, similar to
having short-term wins.
Thus, by following the aforementioned six steps out of a total of eight of
Kotters Change Management, Henry Fonda brought a change in the
decision of all the members.
Ques. 1. Who set the focus and what was it? Why do you say so? (Give a
maximum of three reasons)
Henry Fonda (called Davis) set the focus by being the only one juror to
vote Not Guilty.
1. All but one in the room were convinced about the boy being guilty and did
not want to discuss on the facts and evidences. Despite his opposite
stand, Fonda had the courage and confidence to propose to go for a
cooperative discussion on various possibilities in the case.
2. He came up with different perspectives on all events related to the case
insisting on analysing them as there was a possibility of assumptions and
prejudices in the evidences.
Ques. 2. What are the Leadership competencies that created an
impression on you? (focus more on the core leadership competencies).
The leadership competencies of Henry Fonda which created an impression
on me are as follows:
1. Establishing focus
Fondas main goal was not to bring about a change in the decision taken
by the jury members but to get them to focus on the case itself. He
mentioned that probably, the kid might have committed the murder,
probably not but we need to talk over the case before giving a verdict.
Using this sentence, Fonda drew the attention of others and brought into
limelight the idea of going through the case and thus established focus on
the case.
2. Managing Change
Fonda knew that the change in minds of his fellow jury members would not
be so easy. So he had already done some preparation like getting a similar
knife to the one used for the murder. Fonda was aware that this would
surely draw the attention of the members and he was prepared to drive a
change in the overall thought process of the jury members.
3. Developing others
Henry Fonda helped his fellow jury members to realize that the onus of the
kids life was on them and it would be diabolic to take the decision without

giving a proper scrutiny to the case. He thus developed the others to think
over the case and then give their decision on the same.