Making Change In Complex Organizations

This book is written for the leader or management team of any complex organization attempting to lead an organization-wide change. Successfully leading change has never been easy. Many realities of life in the 21st century have combined to intensify the challenge. This book captures the lessons learned during more than 43 years of experience working in complex, large-scale organizations, 14 years between West Point and the United States Army and more than 29 years in two large, very different American companies. These lessons learned are shared in the hope that it will help others lead change successfully and avoid at least some of the pitfalls that come with it. The principles and questions in this book also benefit leaders making changes in the small organization or those who desire to transform their small organization into a large one. This book is intended to serve as a leaders’ guide of things to think about and how to plan for successful change. Many books have been written about management and leadership, as well as the dos and must-dos of leading an organization. But few books discuss what it takes to make changes in today’s complex organizations, and those that do are often written by consultants who have not practiced what they propose over any significant period of time. This book, by contrast, draws lessons from a successful long-term change made by leaders who had a personal and financial stake in the organization’s success and saw the change all the way through. hr"In my 40 years at Cummins one of the most successful changes made was our adoption of Six Sigma. When I became CEO it was clear that we needed to improve our product and overall business performance. We chose Six Sigma to help us do that. George's book concisely captures many of the things we had to think about when implementing Six Sigma throughout the company. I believe this is a good guide for any leader contemplating making an organization-wide change." Tim Solso former CEO Cummins, Inc. "As CEO I have discovered that just saying I want something done doesn’t make it happen. Change done well is hard work. George’s book is a practical go-to guide for driving lasting change." Tom Linebarger CEO Cummins, Inc. "In medicine today ever-higher quality has become an expectation. This expectation is causing us increasingly to transition from volume-based to value-based medicine. As an industry we are quickly adapting to this new value-based world. However, organizations don’t transform easily. It requires dedicated and engaged teams to be leaders of change in their industry. I have been waiting for a book like this for years...whether you are a medical student or a senior attending physician...George Strodtbeck’s book on Making Change is a must read!!!" James Grant, M.D. Chair, Department of Anesthesiology Beaumont Health System, Royal Oak, Michigan "George Strodtbeck draws on more than three decades of personal experience in planning and executing change in complex organizations. His incisive, fast-paced writing explains, engages and motivates. His guidance is candid about challenges faced but simultaneously practical and actionable in today’s organizations. This book is for any leader seeking to accelerate the pace of change, improvement and innovation in their organizations." Mohan V. Tatikonda, PhD Professor of Operations Management Kelley School of Business, Indiana University

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.

Radical Decision Making offers a controversial new framework to the conventional strategic change management conversation. While many approaches provide a discussion on a singular level, Dr. Hruška blends theory and research of decision making and social interaction to develop a consistent framework of strategic change.

Change has become constant, complex, multifaceted, and overwhelming. To meet this challenge, Bill Pasmore presents four keys to help leaders decide where and how to most effectively focus their change initiatives.

Large Scale Organizational Change provides the principles by which large scale organizations reinvent themselves not once, but on an ongoing basis. Continual reinvention allows leading companies to learn, adapt, and innovate faster than competitors in complex and fast changing environments. These action principles are based on first-hand experience at the world's leading Fortune 500 companies using emergent models of living systems. The context for large scale organizations is one of information overload, complexity and constant change. This book reduces the sense of vulnerability felt by managers. It provides a guide to piloting change in ways that lead to constant renewal and a capacity to survive frequent and often brutal changes in the operating environment. It describes a leadership concerned with the capacity to learn, inflection points, emergent strategies, knowledge management, the ability to anticipate, and tapping into the distributed intelligence resident in the organization. Large Scale Organizational Change provides managers with a framework for making their organizations highly adaptive in the complex market systems in which they operate, thereby reducing or eliminating the need for periodic episodes of traumatic restructuring and sometimes fatal reengineering processes.

As a follow-up to a 2010 volume on organizational change-related consulting, the book continues to push our thinking about the dynamics involved in consulting with change leaders and intervening in the change process. Consulting for organizational change is a special type of consultation, with its own complex set of conditions and needs for a broad range of skills and competencies, which include distinct needs for the client-consultant relationship, superior consulting/facilitation skills, an expertise in human and organizational systems, and, as emphasized in the volume, the masterful “use of self.” As with our prior edited collection, this volume is a joint publication in the Research in Management Consulting and Contemporary Trends in Organization Development and Change book series. The dual focus is intended to reflect the importance of quality consulting for change across both the management consulting and Organization Development (OD) fields. It follows a long history of interest in how consulting affects organization change, what works, and, perhaps most importantly for generating theory and insight into the change process, why it works. The book contains fourteen chapters that frame the changing nature of the organizational change challenge, explore the use of self in intervening in organizations, and examine different change frameworks and perspectives, sharing various reflections and personal insights into the underlying challenges of consulting to bring about organizational change. Our underlying goal is to advance the theory and practice of effective organizational change consultation, stimulating thinking and discussion among change practitioners and researchers so that this work and profession continue to grow and evolve. ENDORSEMENT: “Consultation for Organization Change Revisited offers a clear map of the dominant thinking about how consultants intervene to help organizations create an alternative future. It nicely answers the question of "What is Organization Development." It also has a memory so that you see the arc of the field over time, which gives an important perspective. Organization change is complicated work, this book makes it clearer.” ~ Peter Block Author of Flawless Consulting

Being change capable is the "new normal" for today’s growth-minded organizations. The "do more with less" strategies of the past are no longer effective in preparing organizations to meet the increasing challenges for growth, competitiveness and innovation required of them in this new era. Business change challenges including customer and market shifts, legal and regulatory requirements, strategic redirection, acquisitions, strategic partnerships, and cultural transformation are demanding that organizations effectively and efficiently manage change across multiple dimensions. To reach this level of change capability, organizations must adopt an integrated, balanced and customized approach to change management. Change management is addressed from the unique perspective of both its foundational concepts as well as practical application. Using an integrated, scalable and flexible framework, this book provides tools which can be readily customized and applied to initiatives across or within stages of the business change management lifecycle, from assessing the need for change, through planning the change initiative, designing a balanced change solution which integrates the people, process, and project management elements, through deploying and institutionalizing the change. Common risks associated with failed or stalled change initiatives are presented with best practices and key topics associated with change management are explored and illustrated through real-life case studies. Aimed at both the professionals within organizations and post graduate students and researchers within business strategy, organizational behaviour and change management disciplines, this book will provide a conceptual understanding of change management and a roadmap with a supporting toolbox for leading and implementing change that sticks.