The Science Of Successful Organizational Change

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.

"The best book on change I've ever read..." (Bank CEO) "The best book on change in fifteen years, perhaps longer..." (Organization Development consultant) Leaders need guidance on leading change grounded in the latest science, not 20th-century myths. In this updated 2019 edition of The Science of Organizational Change, Paul takes us on a journey from change mythology, from New Age change ideas, from "reports in drawers", and from pop psychology up to the present. In the first comprehensive treatment of behavioral science in business, you'll learn which cognitive biases caused the 2008 Financial Crisis, Enron, and the Deepwater Horizon. Later in the book, you'll discover how evidence-based management is helping leading businesses including Google. The author's 30-year career, scholarly approach, but without dry academic writing make this book a must-read for all managers interested in change. Few authors incorporate findings from psychology, sociology, medicine, philosophy of science, ethics, public policy, economics, and mathematics into books on change. Fewer still do it in an interesting way. Read case studies from Cisco, Intel, Nokia, BP, Shell, Barclays, British Airways, Comcast, and PwC - all former clients of the author where he advised at C-suite level.

Organizational change can be unpredictable and stressful. With a better understanding of what our brains need to focus, organizations can increase employee engagement, productivity and well-being to successfully manage periods of uncertainty. Drawing on the latest scientific research and verified by an independent neuroscientist, Neuroscience for Organizational Change explores the need for social connection at work, how best to manage emotions and reduce bias in decision-making, and why we need communication, involvement and storytelling to help us through change. Practical tips and suggestions can be found throughout, as well as examples of how these insights have been applied at organizations such as Lloyds Banking Group and GCHQ. The book also sets out a practical science-based planning model, SPACES, to enhance engagement. This updated second edition of Neuroscience for Organizational Change contains new chapters on planning the working day with the brain in mind and on overcoming the difficulties related to behavioural change. It also features up-to-the-minute wider content reflecting the latest insights and developments, and updated case studies from the first edition which give a long-term view of the benefits of applying neuroscience in organizations.

As the business context evolves more rapidly, driven by accelerating technological, political, and social change, an increasing strategic priority for business leaders is how to enact large-scale organizational change. Even companies that are current industry leaders are vulnerable to disruption. Company leaders need to watch over their shoulder for—and transform the company in anticipation of—the next disruption. Mastering the Science of Organizational Change summarizes the work of the BCG Henderson Institute and its fellows and ambassadors over several years to develop a more scientific approach to change. Hundreds of companies are analyzed in the book’s discussion on how to beat the odds in large-scale change management using an evidence-based approach—a large-scale analysis of what approaches actually work in which circumstances. Part 1 of the book reviews the imperatives for self-disruption. The second part elaborates on how to manage the process of change. Finally, Part 3 discusses how organizations can take change to the next level. Events around the book Link to a De Gruyter online event in which, Martin Reeves, Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, will share lessons on how to develop a more scientific approach to change including how to self disrupt, how to manage the process of change, and how organizations can take change to the next level: https://youtu.be/TfzFllmL4Cg

The only constant is change—especially in today's business environment. Increasing globalization and the rise of new markets and technologies are forcing companies to compete in a more turbulent world than ever. To survive and thrive, organizations must be able to continuously evolve. Unfortunately, people tend to resist change. Uncertainty can be daunting, and people generally prefer to keep doing what they already know, avoiding unfamiliar situations, particularly in their work. The good news is that change can be managed using the same processes many organizations already use in their day-to-day project management activities. After all, every project results in some type of change to an organization. Building on the Project Management Institute's Managing Change in Organizations: A Practice Guide, and drawing on the project management expertise of a wide variety of authors, How Successful Organizations Implement Change explains the critical aspects of the change management process and outlines the methods that project, program, and portfolio managers can utilize to bring effective change in a complex and transient business context. For practitioners who are directly leading the change effort as well as those affected by it; for executives formulating strategies, even those managing operations; and for academics researching or teaching others about organizational change management, the examples provided in this book cover a broad range of industries and areas of business. How Successful Organizations Implement Change combines the change management knowledge of experts, academics, researchers, and practitioners with tools, processes, and templates, all of which make this volume a valuable resource, a must-have, for leaders of change in organizations.

SHORTLISTED: CMI Management Book of the Year Awards 2017 - Management Futures Category Using ground-breaking modelling, Big Change, Best Path brings unique insights to the dynamics and process of organizational change, understanding success and failure, defining and describing the drivers and conditions of change, and the patterns and paths of organizational change. Author Warren Parry from Accenture Strategy shows that a whole new way of managing change is possible, from empirical benchmarking, predictive approaches that highlight the specific actions needed at any point of a change programme, and visualization for senior managers to show how each part of an organization is responding. The author also challenges many of the myths of change management and the dynamics of how organizations respond to change, clearly showing the common pitfalls and misunderstandings. Big Change, Best Path explains a new, more analytical way and process for driving successful change, and presents a ground-breaking vision for the future of how organizations can become more agile and resilient.

Cultural Change and Leadership in Organizations discusses ways in which organizations are able to implement successful strategic change; inspirational and conceptual material is combined with practical examples and concrete interventions for planning and implementing cultural change within organizations. Cultural Change and Leadership in Organizations is targeted toward professionals, including organizational psychologists, consultants, senior managers, and human resources professionals, as well as advanced-level business school courses.

Lee Roy Beech seeks to avoid pedantry, gimmicks & hero worship while addressing the complex issues involved in trying to lead an organization. He does not offer any quick fixes, but concentrates on practical strategies.