Customer Reviews

The Change Champion's Fieldguide: Strategies and Tools for Leading Change in Your Organization

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"This fieldguide is for all change champions who are learning about, seeking to, or who are in the midst of leading social or organizational change...The purpose of this fieldguide is to provide you with all of the necessary elements to implement a best practice change or leadership development initiative within your organization or social system. Contributors in this book are widely recognized as among the best in organizational change and leadership development. They provide invaluable lessons in succeeding during crisis or growth modes and economies...Within the forthcoming chapters, you will learn:

*Key elements of leading successful and result-driven change

*Tools, models, instruments, and strategies for leading change

*Trends and research on innovation, change and leadership

*Critical success factors and critical failure factors

*How to design, implement, and evaluate change and leadership initiatives (pp.viii-xi)".

In this context, D. Ulrich, M. Goldsmith, L. Carter, J. Bolt, and N. Smallwood (the editors) divide this invaluable book including twenty-two chapters of 'best practice' into three sections: (1). Transformational and Large Scale Change, (2). Fundamentals of Leading Change, (3). Transformational Leadership and Sustaining Results. They say, "we have different interests, clients, and approaches. We have each experienced successes and failures while hoping only for success. The failures were almost always failures to make correct assumptions about the fit between type of intervention, organizational system, and situation. It is these failures that help us learn; they make us humble and open our minds to different approaches...This fieldguide presents you with an array of choices for how to approach many complex situations. You will find many ideas that you can adapt to your own situation and needs. And, when you do lead change, lead with the same passion, humility, creativity, and commitment to stakeholders, customers, and excellence that have been exhibited by the change champions contributing to this book (from the Introduction)."

In the last chapter of the fieldguide, 'You Can't Be a Champion Unless You Keep Score,' John Sullivan focuses on importance of measuring results. He says that "If this were the Olympics, it would be obvious to all that you couldn't become a champion without measuring results. In fact, the definition of a champion is 'the one with the best results.' In the general business world the use of numbers and metrics is part of life...Within all major firms all projects, products, and business units are evaluated on the basis of numerical results. However, in direct contrast, we within HR resist using metrics, almost like developing them was the equivalent of a root canal...The Watson Wyatt Human Capital Index study demonstrated that the potential impact of people programs on a firm's overall market value could be as high as 47 percent. The road is clear and the time is right. HR must now seize this unprecedented opportunity to adopt metrics and to become the next 'corporate hero' (pp.279-283)"

Therefore, after saying "metrics are the fastest and the cheapest way to change behavior in business," he demonstrates:

I.Nine reasons to utilize metrics: (1). Meeting your goals, (2). Driving improvement, (3). Obtain funding, (4). Early warning a.k.a 'smoke detectors,' (5). Understanding critical success factors, (6). Shift to fact-based decisions, (7). Metrics change behaviors, (8). Eliminate confusion, (9). Builds coordination/cooperation.

II.Eight steps in developing metrics: (1). Select a metric for each program goal, (2). Choosing between soft and hard metrics, (3). Understanding the different categories of business impact, (4). Selecting simple but attention-getting metrics, (5). Understanding the characteristics of great measures, (6). Selecting from standard HR metrics, (7). Selecting from advanced metrics, (8). Building the business case for increased HR funding.

III.Eleven decision factors for approving HR projects: (1). A low initial investment, (2). The project has a high ROI, (3). Similar projects implemented elsewhere have a high success rate or a low risk of failure, (4). The project starts right away without a long delay, (5). There is a short payback period, (6). The project has a complete set of accurate results metrics and a method for collecting metric information, (7). No new headcount is required, (8). The project has negative consequences for failure built in, (9). The program gives us a competitive advantage over other firms, (10). The program can demonstrate that it increases worker productivity, (11). A project team is credible and has high success rate on previous projects.

Finally, Sullivan writes, "HR professionals understand that the world of business has recently lost its tolerance for decisions made without facts and for programs that don't produce measurable results...Metrics can provide you with the opportunity to be superior performer by letting you know unambiguously where you are and how far you have to go. Your future path is clear; you can't become a champion...without measuring your results (pp.297-298)."

I highly recommend this invaluable fieldguide to all change champions of the future.

I started reading this book and I still cannot place it down - it's brimming with information that I can use to help others and myself change during difficult times or the best times in my organization. As a manager in my organization, I have to stay knowledgeable of all of the best management practices in the industry - - this is the best book I have found for this purpose. You could pay for $1000 and up attending conferences and $5000 on research reports and never find this kind of management knowledge.

Our Organizational Development book club selected this to read, in part, on the reputation of the editors and on the strength of the reviews on Amazon from customers and other reviewers. However, in general we found the book to be a somewhat disappointing hodgepodge of articles on change concepts and succession management. The articles ranged from the very good --Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Deviance --to the generic. There were several basic issues (including typos) that frankly should have been caught in editing. While it did have many useful chapters and contained a nice organizational structure and outline, the content itself was hit and miss, and the book unfortunately, didn't live up to its glowing reviews.

This book is an absolute steal for the price. It is extremely generous in the information it provides. There are 22 chapters of the best theories, practices, and examples in change/business management and leadership/organization development -- with an eye towards getting results that matter for you and your organization. This book has already helped me to make my job more valuable inside of my organization - as well as helped me to better understand how to get my ideas implemented faster - and improved my chances of getting a promotion! Thank you to the publisher and editors for providing me with a book that has far exceeded my expectations.

Read this book line by line and you will be able to apply the suggestions and get results taht matter. The ROI in the case studies are under estimated. Notice that the outcomes take into account the people. What can I say more...go for it.