The Manager As Change Agent

Increasingly, managers at all levels of the organization are being called upon to serve as "change agents," responsible for developing, implementing, and sustaining HRD initiatives, regardless of whether they have been formally trained to do so. In The Manager as Change Agent, Jerry W. Gilley, together with a team of experts in the field of internal consulting, offers a practical approach to developing the skills necessary for leading change in your organization, including motivating people who are resistant to change, resolving conflict, and building consensus.

Explains the global changes confronting business leaders. This book includes strategies for managing major change, creating an organizational culture conducive to change, and leading change effectively. It contains tools that managers need to get a handle on the change management strategies and ensure the success of their business improvement.

The Project Management as Change Agent examines the often overlooked role of the project manager. It is not enough to rely on the relationship between manager and project team. The authors collective experience widens our view beyond this stage to that of relationships with indirect influences such as owners, sponsors, resource providers and consumers. In fact, anyone whose lives are affected by the project' '''s work and outcome. This radical re-evaluation is a comprehensive preparation and guide for any project manager wanting to maximize strategic and successful change as an integral part of their project objective.

"A good balance between theory and practice . . . it definitely fills a void in the [lack of] texts in the area and the change literature in general . . . a good fit for my graduate class on 'Managing Organizational Change.'" —Anthony F. Buono, McCallum Graduate School of Business, Bentley College "Like Gareth Morgan's Images of Organization, this book is a superb blend of theory and practicality. It demystifies chaos and paradox, and it encourages the understanding of organizational dynamics from multiple perspectives. It is refreshing to read a book that presents diverse theories and interventions so even-handedly." —Andrea Markowitz, Ph.D., President, OB&D, Inc. Learning to Change: A Guide for Organizational Change Agents provides a comprehensive overview of organizational change theories and practices developed by both U.S. and European change theorists. The authors compare and contrast five fundamentally different ways of thinking about change: yellow print thinking, blue print thinking, red print thinking, green print thinking and white print thinking. They also discuss in detail the steps change agents take, such as diagnosis, change strategy, the intervention plan, and interventions. In addition, they explore the attributes of a successful change agent and provide advice for career and professional development. The book includes case studies that describe multiple approaches to organizational change issues. This book will appeal to both the practitioner and academic audiences. It can be used as a text in graduate courses in change management and will also be a useful reference for consultants and managers. Features: Discusses the abilities, attitudes, and styles of successful change agents Describes five fundamentally different ways of thinking about change Presents a state-of-the-art overview of change management insights, methods, and instruments Summarizes an extensive amount of organizational change literature Supplies readers with useful insights and courses of action that will allow them to design and implement change professionally Learning to Change became a bestseller upon its initial publication in the Netherlands. The color-model on change is very popular among thousands of managers and change consultants and presents a new approach to change processes and a new language for change.

Leaders today—whether in corporations or associations, nonprofits or nations—face massive, messy, multidimensional problems. No one person or group can possibly solve them—they require the broadest possible cooperation. But, says Harvard scholar Dean Williams, our leadership models are still essentially tribal: individuals with formal authority leading in the interest of their own group. In this deeply needed new book, he outlines an approach that enables leaders to transcend internal and external boundaries and help people to collaborate, even people over whom they technically have no power. Drawing on what he's learned from years of working in countries and organizations around the world, Williams shows leaders how to approach the delicate and creative work of boundary spanning, whether those boundaries are cultural, organizational, political, geographic, religious, or structural. Sometimes leaders themselves have to be the ones who cross the boundaries between groups. Other times, a leader's job is to build relational bridges between divided groups or even to completely break down the boundaries that block collaborative problem solving. By thinking about power and authority in a different way, leaders will become genuine change agents, able to heal wounds, resolve conflicts, and bring a fractured world together.

If we are to impact any nation for Jesus Christ, then we must affect the seven spheres, or mountains of society that are the pillars of any society. These seven mountains are business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family, and religion.

Any human resource development (HRD) initiative involves change; by definition, HRD implies a commitment to improving organizational effectiveness & enhancing employees' performance & productivity. Managers at all levels of the organization are being called upon to serve as "change agents," responsible for developing, implementing, & sustaining HRD initiatives. Here, Gilley offers a practical approach to developing the skills necessary for leading change at any level of your organization. From motivating people who are resistant to change, to resolving conflict & building consensus, this book shows how managers can bring out the best in everyone, with a direct effect on corporate competitiveness & productivity.

From her own experience in various agencies and organizations, Dr. Rusaw knows that to inspire change in any organization and particularly in the public sector, change agents must understand that change is primarily collective, nonrational, and nonlinear. People who seek to create change cannot stand apart from the problems, issues, and concerns raised by their constituents, but must merge themselves into the data-making, analysis, and diagnosis phases of consulting. The agent must, in other words, participate actively in creating change—and how the agent must do this, why, and the effects the agent can expect are the subjects of Dr. Rusaw's book. Few books discuss public sector change in the way Dr. Rusaw does here, and none incorporate the phenomenological perspective that she uses. Her book will appeal to practicing public administrators who seek real-life examples presented in conversational language. It will also be important for teachers and students in public administration, specifically in courses in organizational behavior, leadership, organization theory, human relations, and public personnel management. Not only can change agents help public employees serve the purposes set out for them more effectively and efficiently, but by service and other efforts they can also help reverse the downward trend that has characterized the public sector in recent years. Dr. Rusaw maintains that such change is made possible by personal transformation, certainly, but also by interpersonal transformations. By focusing on individual and group needs as keys to organizational change, change agents can facilitate what is most needed: not just localized alterations but widespread, holistic transformations. Her book looks at the role of healing—particularly, the inherent skills of listening, empathizing, and encouraging—and at the ways in which people can confront and solve problems in negotiated environments. She also sees that central to re-education and re-socialization is the quality of the change agent's inner person: how well the agent is able to understand the role of self in the change process. Her book provides ways in which agents can inspire others to change too. In other words, Dr. Rusaw sees organizational change as a process moving from the inside to the outside, and it is on this foundation that her unusual, thoughtful, and ultimately practical book is based.