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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too little new analysis, too much consultantspeak., October 21, 1999
This review is from: Champions of Change: How CEOs and Their Companies are Mastering the Skills of Radical Change (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Hardcover)
Q: How many CEO's does it take to change a light bulb? A: Change?!? Change is the corporate mantra of the '90s. Unknowable, unpredictable, unavoidable: change has made the ominous transition from verb to noun, as organizations scramble to predict, demand, drive, and implement change. And the more intense and comprehensive the change, the more its success depends on an integrated process driven by the top of the organization. If you were surprised by that last sentence, then Champions of Change is the book for you. Author David Nadler's approach, which he would fight with tooth and claw to defend, is built on the premise that "discontinuous change" cannot succeed without the "active, public, and personal leadership of the CEO and other people at the top of the organization." Based on his work with Xerox and other major corporations, Nadler believes that change requires a multi-stage campaign, dynamic and participatory, that cannot triumph if its leaders treat change as an enemy to be resisted by sporadic skirmishing or clandestine conflict. If a corporation hopes to maintain or achieve competitive advantage, argues Nadler, then its senior leaders must launch early and dramatic change. For many readers, this is hardly a heaven-sundering epiphany. And that's exactly the problem with Champions of Change: there's no there there. Nadler's concepts aren't new, although his momentous references to systems theory and organizational fit and "a process that we call strategic choice" (italics his) imply superior insight and wisdom with which few mortals are blessed. Using the sort of language that gives consultants a bad name, he announces that "based on years of close observation, I can assure you that transition states [between the current and the future] always feature three characteristics that if ignored, carry the potential to kill any change initiative." What is this trinity? Instability, uncertainty, and stress. No surprises there. At heart, Nadler believes in system by classification. As a result, Champions of Change is more dictionary than discourse. Three challenges of discontinuous change produce five phases of change management, of which Phase 3 contains four steps, Phase 4 three activities, and so on. Chapter 5, "Winning Hearts and Minds," runs to twelve action steps, and Nadler doesn't effectively follow through on his promise to explain which step to take when. The book does offer some useful gems, most of them similarly numerical: every major message of change should be delivered six times; the number of collective ideas an organization can hold simultaneously is three, plus or minus one. But once you peel away the elaborate taxonomy, you find that Nadler offers no breakthroughs, no exceptional understanding, no real road map for change. Champions of Change has its moments. The sixteen pages on "recognizing the change imperative" provide a solid grounding in diagnosis and interpretation, despite Nadler's plug for his company's software. If you want an insider's perspective on corporate change at Xerox, then buy the book immediately. For the most part, however, Champions of Change is a disappointment. Explaining change requires an intricate balance of perspective, pragmatism, and common sense; you can't get by on 300 pages of consultantspeak.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Five Stages of Discontinuous Change", June 18, 2000
This review is from: Champions of Change: How CEOs and Their Companies are Mastering the Skills of Radical Change (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Hardcover)
"Your first visit to a new company can be awfully confusing. From the outside you see the front of the headquarters building and the visitor's entrance-but not much more. Inside you see a maze of offices and work areas-but at first glance they don't seem to be arranged in any particular pattern. You see people rushing busily to and fro, but you have no idea what they're doing or what, if anything, they're actually accomplishing. If you're to have any chance of quickly making sense of what's going on-of how the company is organized and how it really operates-you need a mental template, a systemic way to observe and understand the organization. For executives and managers intent on leading change, that kind of template, or model, is essential. Without it you haven't a clue where to start...Throughout this book I'm going to be talking about organizational change in terms of a model my colleagues and I have developed and refined over the past two decades" (p.21). In this context, David A. Nadler divides his book roughly into three sections. In the first section, he (1) overviews the forces that make change at once so inevitable and so difficult in modern organizations, (2) describes the pivotal role of top leadership, (3) describes the four basic types of organizational change, with a special emphasis on the most difficult of all-the Overhaul, or radical discontinuous change, (4) explores the inevitable resistance to change, and (5) offers some specific techniques for overcoming those barriers. In the second section, he (1) deals with the substantive tools and techniques that are required as the organization passes through the five stages of the change cycle, (2) describes in turn the issues that confront leaders as they go about changing each component of the organization. In the third section, he deals with the unique role of top managers in leading change. In Chapter 4, he introduces five stages of discontinuous change: 1. Recognizing the change imperative: The easy description of this stage is simply that it answers the question, What's going wrong here? (for detailed discussion see Chapter 6) 2. Developing a shared direction: Providing clear direction for change and building coalition that will provide the support essential to the success of any radical change effort. (for detailed discussion see Chapter 7) 3. Implementing change: The core of the change process. (for detailed discussion see Chapters 8 to 11) 4. Consolidating change: Making change an integral part of the way the organization operates. (for detailed discussion see Chapter 12) 5. Sustaining change: The challenge of maintaining momentum, avoiding complacence, and searching for signs of the next wave of change. (for detailed discussion see Chapter 12) On the other hand, in Chapter 5, he lists and discusses twelve action steps for overcoming resistance to change as follows: 1. Build the support of key power groups. 2. Use leader behavior to generate support. 3. Use symbols and language deliberately. 4. Define points of stability. 5. Create dissatisfaction with the current state. 6. Build participation in planning and implementing change. 7. Reward behavior in support of change. 8. Provide people time and opportunity to disengage from the old. 9. Develop and communicate a clear image of the future state. 10. Use multiple leverage points. 11. Develop transition management structures. 12. Collect and analyze feedback. He argues that "the twelve action steps are not a recipe for transition management. They're a template to be overlaid on each organization and adjusted to its unique set of circumstances" (p.108). Highly recommended.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In-depth understanding and insights into the change process., September 10, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Champions of Change: How CEOs and Their Companies are Mastering the Skills of Radical Change (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) (Hardcover)
This is a highly informative work that explores the nature of organizational change and presents an approach to initiating, designing, and implementing change. The authors propose that the core principles of change managers are: appropriate involvement, committed leadership, valid information exchange, informed choices and integrated change. The book also discusses the role of management at all levels. It conveys experiences, guidelines and a congruence model for understanding the organization as a system. This book is on-target, providing in-depth understanding and insights into the change process.
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