Managing Change In An Agile World

Agile change management is the adaptive and iterative planning and execution of change management practices that encourages flexibility and speed. In agile change environments, changes happen swiftly and repetitively. In these environments, the goals of change management work are largely unchanged. However, there are unique principles and tools that influence how change management is applied to help people be ready, willing, and able to work in new ways. In this book, we have identified the principles and practices for managing change in an agile, fast, iterative, environment. If organizations want to make effective change, they need to recognize and deal with the principles of how change happens within agile organizations and have the tools to make the work happen. The book is divided into two parts - one that teaches background, ideas and approaches, and one that is rooted in the day to day tactics for the change leader who is managing change in iterative fast-paced change environments.

The second edition of Agile Change Management provides essential tools to build change manager capabilities and ensure change initiatives are embedded effectively throughout the organization. This book is a comprehensive resource for creating a roadmap that is flexible and unique to each organization to manage any type of change initiative. Detailing all the processes, activities and information needed, from creating the right environment for change to completing iterative tasks, it shows how to respond to different needs as they arise, reducing the potential for wasted time and resources. The updated second edition features chapters on behavioural change and decomposition in planning iterations, and new material on prototyping for business needs and virtual leadership. Whether implementing a large-scale transformation or working through projects at micro-level, Agile Change Management provides tools, frameworks and examples necessary to adapt to and manage change effectively.

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 resistance is a natural reaction, when you don’t involve the people affected by the change in the design of the change. This book will help you implement successful change and bypass change resistance by co-creating change. The book will do that through examples of how innovative practices can dramatically improve the success of change programs. These practices combine ideas from the Agile, Lean Startup, change management, organizational development and psychology communities. This book will change how you think about change."--

If you read nothing else on change management, read these definitive articles from Harvard Business Review. Most companies' change initiatives fail. Yours don't have to. HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management 2-Volume Collection provides enduring ideas and practical advice to help you spearhead change in your organization. Bringing together HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management and HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management, Vol. 2, this collection includes twenty articles selected by HBR's editors and features the indispensable article "Leading Change" by John Kotter. From timeless classics to the latest game-changing ideas from thought leaders W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, Tim Brown, Roger Martin, and more, HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management 2-Volume Collection will inspire you to: Lead through the eight critical stages of change Establish a sense of urgency Overcome addiction to the status quo Transform your company's culture Minimize the pain of change Get reorgs right Reshape your organization for climate sustainability Scale agile practices throughout your company Lead change when business is good—but also when times are tough HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

This book examines agile approaches from a management perspective by focusing on matters of strategy, implementation, organization and people. It examines the turbulence of the marketplace and business environment in order to identify what role agile management has to play in coping with such change and uncertainty. Based on observations, personal experience and extensive research, it clearly identifies the fabric of the agile organization, helping managers to become agile leaders in an uncertain world. The book opens with a broad survey of agile strategies, comparing and contrasting some of the major methodologies selected on the basis of where they lie on a continuum of ceremony and formality, ranging from the minimalist technique-driven and software engineering focused XP, to the pragmatic product-project paradigm that is Scrum and its scaled counterpart SAFe®, to the comparatively project-centric DSDM. Subsequently, the core of the book focuses on DSDM, owing to the method’s comprehensive elaboration of program and project management practices. This work will chiefly be of interest to all those with decision-making authority within their organizations (e.g., senior managers, line managers, program, project and risk managers) and for whom topics such as strategy, finance, quality, governance and risk management constitute a daily aspect of their work. It will, however, also be of interest to those readers in advanced management or business administration courses (e.g., MBA, MSc), who wish to engage in the management of agile organizations and thus need to adapt their skills and knowledge accordingly.

Transform your entire organization, not just a part of it. Take a modern look now that the world is focusing on business agility rather than thinking about team-level or even scaled Agile. Many people and businesses believe that “doing Agile” will solve all their business and organizational problems. The truth is that “doing Agile”, especially team-level agility, is not the same as being an agile organization. Authors Doug Dockery and Laureen Knudsen share their years of experience in transforming corporations and organizations to successfully compete and win in today’s fast-paced markets. Using proven techniques and stories of actual experiences in a multitude of organizations, Doug and Laureen relate what it takes to successfully transform your organization, as well as how to tell if your transformation is working. Modern Business Management details what you need to know to transform your business to deliver value and thrive. Coverage includes: What Agile means to an executive and the benefits you should be seeing The top failure modes and why so many transformations fail A framework for success, including an operational framework and a transformation framework How big data internal to a company is needed to successfully run a world-wide corporation today The definition of a modern business and what it looks like What You’ll learn Understand why businesses are not getting the benefits out of their current Agile transformation Follow the process that organizations need to go through to succeed See how C-level executives can benefit from Agile practices Know how to succeed where others are failing Discover how to keep up with a constantly disrupted and ever-changing market Who This Book Is For Management and executives in corporations from the director level to the C-level