Change Management:
The Harvard Business Review paperback series is designed to bring today's managers and
professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world.
Here are the landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required
reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe. From the seminal article
"Leading Change" by John Kotter to Paul Strebel on why employees so often resist change, Harvard
Business Review on Change is the most comprehensive resource available for embracing corporate
change--and using it to your company's greatest advantage.
The Fieldbook is an intensely pragmatic guide. It shows how to create an organization of learners
where memories are brought to life, where collaboration is the lifeblood of every endeavour, and
where the tough questions are fearlessly asked. The stories here show that companies, businesses,
schools, agencies, and even communities can undo their "learning disabilities" and achieve superior
performance. If ever a work gave meaning to the phrase hands-on, this is it. Senge and his four co-
authors cover it all including:
- Reinventing relationships
- Being loyal to the truth
- Building a shared vision
- Organizations as communities
- Designing an organization's governing ideas
Since Peter Senge published his groundbreaking book The Fifth Discipline, he and his associates
have frequently been asked by the business community: "How do we go beyond the first steps of
corporate change? How do we sustain momentum?" They know that companies and organizations
cannot thrive today without learning to adapt their attitudes and practices. But companies that
establish change initiatives discover, after initial success, that even the most promising efforts to
transform or revitalize organizations--despite interest, resources, and compelling business results--
can fail to sustain themselves over time. That's because organizations have complex, well-
developed immune systems, aimed at preserving the status quo.
Now, drawing upon new theories about leadership and the long-term success of change initiatives,
and based upon twenty-five years
of experience building learning organizations, the authors of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook show
how to accelerate success and avoid the obstacles that can stall momentum. The Dance of Change,
written for managers and executives at every level of an organization, reveals how business
leaders can work together to anticipate the challenges that profound change will ultimately force
the organization to face. Then, in a down-to- earth and compellingly clear format, readers will learn
how to build the personal and organizational capabilities needed to meet those challenges.
These challenges are not imposed from the outside; they are the product of assumptions and
practices that people take for granted--an inherent, natural part of the processes of change. And
they can stop innovation cold, unless managers at all levels learn to anticipate them and recognize
the hidden rewards in each challenge, and the potential to spur further growth. Within the
frequently encountered challenge of "Not Enough Time," for example--the lack of control over time
available for innovation and learning initiatives--lays a valuable opportunity to reframe the way
people organize their workplaces.
This book identifies universal challenges that organizations ultimately find themselves confronting,
including the challenge of "Fear and Anxiety"; the need to diffuse learning across organizational
boundaries; the ways in which assumptions built in to corporate measurement systems can
handcuff learning initiatives; and the almost unavoidable misunderstandings between "true
believers" and non-believers in a company.
Filled with individual and team exercises, in-depth accounts of sustaining learning initiatives by
managers and leaders in the field, and well-tested practical advice, The Dance of Change provides
an insider's perspective on implementing learning and change initiatives at such corporations as
British Petroleum, Chrysler, Dupont, Ford, General Electric, Harley-Davidson, Hewlett-Packard,
Mitsubishi Electric, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shell Oil Company, Toyota, the United States Army, and
Xerox. It offers crucial advice for line-level managers, executive leaders, internal networkers,
educators, and others who are struggling to put change initiatives into practice.
Organizations are like automobiles. They don't run themselves, except downhill.
Leadership now requires very different behaviour from the leadership tradition we are used to. It
requires leaders who speak to the collective imagination of their people, co-opting them to join in
the business journey; leaders who are able to motivate people to full commitment and have them
make that extra effort. It's all about human behaviour. It's about understanding the way people
and organizations behave, about creating relationships, about building commitment, and about
adapting your behaviour to lead in a creative and motivating way.
So, ask yourself what you're doing about the leadership factor. How do you execute your own
leadership style? Whether you work on the shop floor or have a corner office on the top floor of a
shimmering skyscraper, what have you done today to be more effective as a leader?
There are no quick answers to leadership questions, and there are no easy solutions. In fact, the
more we learn the more it seems there is to learn. In The Leadership Mystique, management and
psychology guru Manfred Kets de Vries unpicks the many layers of complexity that underlie
effective leadership, and gets to the heart of the day-to-day behaviour of leading people in the
human enterprise.
"Your business can have all the advantages in the world; strong financial resources, enviable
market position, and state-of-the-art technology, but if leadership fails, all of these advantages
melt away."-Manfred Kets de Vries, author
Leading Change, John P. Kotter, Harvard
Business School Press, ISBN 0-87584-747-1
From Publishers Weekly
Harvard Business School professor Kotter (A Force for Change) breaks from the mold of M.B.A.
jargon-filled texts to produce a truly accessible, clear and visionary guide to the business world's
buzzword for the late '90s change. In this excellent business manual, Kotter emphasizes a
comprehensive eight-step framework that can be followed by executives at all levels.
Kotter advises those who would implement change to foster a sense of urgency within the
organization. "A higher rate of urgency does not imply ever-present panic, anxiety, or fear. It
means a state in which complacency is virtually absent." Twenty-first century business change must
overcome over managed and under led cultures. "Because management deals mostly with the
status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try
to become much more skilled at creating leaders." Kotter also identifies pitfalls to be avoided, like
"big egos and snakes" or personalities that can undermine a successful change effort.
Kotter convincingly argues for the promotion and recognition of teams rather than individuals. He
aptly concludes with an emphasis on lifelong learning. "In an ever changing world, you never learn
it all, even if you keep growing into your '90s." Leading Change is a useful tool for everyone from
business students preparing to enter the work force to middle and senior executives faced with the
widespread transformation in the corporate world.
