Changing Change Management

The literature on Change Management works from the premise that management possesses the power to achieve change and this is evident in that resistance is little more than a footnote in most textbooks. This assumption sits uneasily, however, with the high failure rate of Change Management interventions. This book seeks to explain this paradox by providing a critical ‘relational’ approach towards Change Management. What would a book on Change Management look like that takes resistance seriously? This book attempts precisely this by exploring how resistance is as much a part of change as the strategies of those that seek to enact it. The findings are drawn from a qualitative study of organizational transformation in a Local Government Authority in the UK. Its detailed empirical insights enable readers to explore organizational change from many different perspectives considering issues such as the strategic use of metaphor and counter-metaphors; management and employee resistance; organizational politics and cynicism. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students interested in change management, organizational studies, human resource management, and critical management studies.

The literature on Change Management works from the premise that management possesses the power to achieve change. This assumption sits uneasily, however, with the high failure rate of Change Management interventions. This book seeks to explain this paradox by providing a critical 'relational' approach.

Every leader understands the burning need for change–and every leader knows how risky it is, and how often it fails. To make organizational change work, you need to base it on science, not intuition. Despite hundreds of books on change, failure rates remain sky high. Are there deep flaws in the guidance change leaders are given? While eschewing the pat answers, linear models, and change recipes offered elsewhere, Paul Gibbons offers the first blueprint for change that fully reflects the newest advances in mindfulness, behavioral economics, the psychology of risk-taking, neuroscience, mindfulness, and complexity theory. Change management, ostensibly the craft of making change happen, is rife with myth, pseudoscience, and flawed ideas from pop psychology. In Gibbons’ view, change management should be “euthanized” and replaced with change agile businesses, with change leaders at every level. To achieve that, business education and leadership training in organizations needs to become more accountable for real results, not just participant satisfaction (the “edutainment” culture). Twenty-first century change leaders need to focus less on project results, more on creating agile cultures and businesses full of staff who have “get to” rather than “have to” attitudes. To do that, change leaders will have to leave behind the old paradigm of “carrots and sticks,” both of which destroy engagement. “New analytics” offer more data-driven approaches to decision making, but present a host of people challenges—where petabyte information flows meet traditional decision-making structures. These approaches will have to be complemented with “leading with science”—that is, using evidence-based management to inform strategy and policy decisions. In The Science of Successful Organizational Change , you'll learn: How the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world affects the scale and pace of change in today’s businesses How understanding of flaws in human decision-making can help leaders guide their teams toward wiser strategic decisions when the stakes are largest—including “when to trust your guy and when to trust a model” and “when all of us are smarter than one of us” How new advances in neuroscience have altered best practices in influencing colleagues; negotiating with partners; engaging followers' hearts, minds, and behaviors; and managing resistance How leading organizations are making use of the science of mindfulness to create agile learners and agile cultures How new ideas from analytics, forecasting, and risk are humbling those who thought they knew the future–and how the human side of analytics and the psychology of risk are paradoxically more important in this technologically enabled world What complexity theory means for decision-making in the context of your own business How to create resilient and agile business cultures and anti-fragile, dynamic business structures To link science with your "on-the-ground" reality, Gibbons tells “warts and all” stories from his twenty-plus years consulting to top teams and at the largest businesses in the world. You'll find case studies from well-known companies like IBM and Shell and CEO interviews from Nokia and Barclays Bank.

Change management is the missing piece that takes good ideas and turns them into business success. This book is not only a solid introduction to the discipline of change management, but is the primer to catalyze change leadership and competency in your organization. The responsibility for creating competencies to manage and lead change does not rest solely with HR, but lies within all management, right to the seat of the CEO. This book is a practical look at what it means to manage the people side of change

From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented merger and acquisition activity to scandal, greed, and, ultimately, recession -- we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. By outlining the process organizations have used to achieve transformational goals and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work.

This impressive collection features the best works by John P. Kotter, known worldwide as the authority on leadership and change. Curated by Harvard Business Review, the longtime publisher of some of Kotter’s most important ideas, the Change Leadership set features full digital editions of the author’s classic books, including bestsellers Leading Change, The Heart of Change, and A Sense of Urgency, as well as “What Leaders Really Do” and his newly published book Accelerate, which is based on the award-winning article of the same name that appeared in Harvard Business Review in late 2013. Kotter’s books and ideas have guided and inspired leaders at all levels. He is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at Harvard Business School, an award-winning business and management thought leader, a successful entrepreneur, and an inspirational speaker. His ideas have helped to mobilize people around the world to better lead organizations, and their own lives, in an era of increasingly rapid change. This specially priced collection offers Kotter’s best practical advice, management insights, and useful tools to help you successfully lead and implement change in your organization—and master the art of change leadership.

In his first complete text on the ADKAR model, Jeff Hiatt explains the origin of the model and explores what drives each building block of ADKAR. Learn how to build awareness, create desire, develop knowledge, foster ability and reinforce changes in your organization. The ADKAR Model is changing how we think about managing the people side of change, and provides a powerful foundation to help you succeed at change.

The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems? In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization. This book is divided into four sections: Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE) Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use