Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is the chief executive officer of Nestle. Headquartered in Switzerland this firm is the largest food company in the world with some 225000 employees. The following are brief excerpts from his comments on the preferred decision-making process for managing change. Bid, dramatic change is fine for a crisis. If you come in as CEO and a turnaround is necessary, then fine, have a revolution. In that situation, change is relatively easy because the whole organization understands that, just to survive, you need to do things differently. They are prepared for change. They understand when you say, the cancer is here, where do I cut? But not every company in the world is in crisis all the time. Many companies like us---not as big, of course---but they are performing well. Growing, innovating, and so forth--good and fit. Why should we manufacture dramatic change? Just for change's sake? To follow some sort of fad without logical thinking behind it? We are very skeptical of any kind of fad and of the self-appointed gurus you hear from all the time, making pronouncements. It is easy to be dogmatic when you don't have to run a business. When you run a business, you must be pragmatic. Big, disruptive change programs are anything but that. You cannot underestimate the traumatic impact of abrupt change, the distraction it causes in running the business, the fear it provokes in people, the demands it makes on management's time. And frankly, you could make the case that any kind of onetime change program is actually a very worrisome warning--It's a bad sign that a company's leaders have had to make such an intervention. Think of medicine again. If you take prevention care of your health, and you've taken the time for check-ups, you won't wake up one day to find you have to cut off your let. That is why we see adapting improving, and restructuring as a continuous process. We put on our books restructuring charges of up to 300 million US dollars, before operating profit, as operating expenses, year after year. Most of our competitors---most companies, in fact--would account for these as extraordinary charges. Very different philosophies, no? You know, all this talk about reinvention in business reminds me of 1968, when a whole generation thought you couldn't have social change without a revolution. ..Evolution can happen if you believe in it. You can have slow and steady change, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. Our growth has happened without frenzy, without bloodshed. Just constantly challenging people to be better, day by day, bit by bit