Change Power: Capabilities That Drive Corporate Renewal [Paperback]

Dennis Turner (Author), Michael Crawford (Author, Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

To achieve sustained high performance, organizations need more than the operational capabilities we recognize as familiar and essential management skills and techniques. There are a few key capabilities vital to success in virtually all change situations, and these are different from those capabilities needed to achieve high performance in the here and now. These reshaping capabilities provide the basis for organizational renewal and yet they seem to elude a great many organizations. In an extensive study of 243 cases of organizational change in private and public sector organizations, the authors found that:

there was at least one major setback in 67% of the change attempts surveyed

47% of the cases were hit by two major setbacks

29% experienced no less than three. Yet in 88% of cases, executives felt that the new directions they were pursuing were right, and 92% felt that the changes were not beyond their firms capacity to achieve. The reality proved different. DISCOVER WHAT IT REALLY TAKES TO ACHIEVE EFFECTIVE CHANGE Turner and Crawford reveal the essential capabilities of renewal Engagement, Development and Performance Management and show how these provide the fundamental basis for action to achieve corporate renewal in virtually all change situations.

Engagement gets the people of the organization informed, involved and committed to its future.

Development identifies and builds the operational capabilities and resources for that future.

Performance Management proactively manages the processes of change to realize the goals. RESEARCH, INSIGHT AND A POWERFUL NEW FRAMEWORK Change Power is based on rigorous and extensive quantitative research on a very large number (243) of corporate changes. It uses case examples to show the relevance and applicability of its central concepts in a variety of real-world situations faced by managers. Change Power analyzes the key organizational states that affect change effectiveness and shows how those states can be managed to improve results. Change Power provides data and new insights into changes in different situations, for example cultural change, the public sector, reorganization, reorientation and refinement. Change Power clarifies the nature and role of leadership in change. It explains and demonstrates how managers can develop and embed in their organization corporate capabilities that enhance its ability to change and renew itself. Change Power demonstrates a powerful and simple action planning process to manage change effectively and shows how that framework can be adapted and successfully applied to any situation. Change Power offers a substantially different approach than other books on change management. Basing its arguments on years of concrete research and analysis, it describes in detail what actually works for organizations.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Change Power deals with the real world of today where executives in private and public business organizations are confronted with change at an unprecedented pace. This interesting book is a good read. I strongly recommend it to those involved in managing the challenge of corporate change. -- Paul Simons AM, Former Executive Chairman, Woolworths Limited

Dennis Turner and Michael Crawford carefully identify and analyze the capabilities required for effective change. Their insight is that these change and reshaping capabilities are quite different to the capabilities required for achieving ongoing operational performance. Their findings have great practical and theoretical value. -- Frederick G. Hilmer, AO, former Managing Partner of McKinseys Australia, former Dean of the Australian Graduate School of Management and current CEO of John Fairfax Holdings, Australias most prestigious newspaper group

This book moves the field of organizational change from the stage of magic, mirrors and gurus to a fact based science. The authors have developed a powerful model that managers can use to magnify their impact on performance. I recommend it for both managers and students of management. -- Professor Dexter Dunphy, Foundation Director, Centre for Corporate Change, University of New South Wales

From the Publisher

This work, by Professor Turner and Dr Crawford, is a rare combination of research and exposition, using a combination of analysis and cases to help the reader acquire valuable skills in making effective corporate change. The background to the work, and the results, are best expressed in the authors' words: "Interesting stories about corporate change are common and often told by someone who is, or was, a chief executive. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to find these different stories conflict in what they say leads to success, or to discover that the actions described are difficult to adapt to your own situation. In fact, case histories can be extremely useful for illustrating a principle when you know the principle. But they can also be a lousy way of trying to find a real principle. In addition, people rarely recount tales of unsuccessful change. Yet there are more failures in change than successes and failures are often more instructive than successes. We wanted to better understand what lay behind effective organizational change, both for our own interest and to provide more useful advice to managers. Simply listening to anecdotes is not enough. The only way to do what we wanted is to follow a rigorous, scientific approach, using quantitative measurement and analysis of a large number of change cases, including unsuccessful ones. While we had a strong interest in corporate change, we had an even stronger interest in sustained high performance of organizations. We believed that in order to perform well over time, organizations need to be able to change effectively, but we also expected other attributes to be important. So, in our research, we set out to measure and analyse things that could affect change as well as the current operations of a business. When we started, we knew a lot of things that might affect change and current operations, but we did not have a useful framework for them. We were enormously excited, once we had gathered the data on 243 cases and analysed it, to discover that the data revealed a distinct framework of five capabilities, or types of action:

Engagement

Development

Performance Management

Biztech

Marketing and Selling and that some of these capabilities are needed for effective change and others are needed for high current performance. Our book is about these five capabilities, the way they affect corporate change and business success overall, the competencies they involve, and their formation. But the book is more than that. Our research included the actions managers take, and how they relate to individual and corporate capabilities. It also explored a number of organizational states that have an impact on current performance and change, and which can be monitored and managed to achieve better results. We have tried to integrate these various aspects to give managers a strong understanding of how they can be most successful in renewing their organization, or their part of it, and to provide a template to help them plan change. And in doing this we have used a large number of descriptive cases to illustrate our points. Our data has come from large and small corporations, in the public and private sectors, in Australia and New Zealand. Are the results relevant to other countries? We believe they are. When we considered the framework that emerged so forcefully from our analysis, we could see parts of it in management research in the US, the UK and Europe, but not integrated in the way we discovered. And when we looked for examples to illustrate our results, we found them not just in Australian cases such as Woolworths, FAI, DuPont and the New South Wales State Library. We also found them in US, UK and Japanese companies, such as General Electric, 3M, Andersen Consulting, McDonalds, Sony, Motorola, Nuclear Electric, Rank Xerox, and Storagetek. We believe the Change Power framework is a very powerful tool for managers who want to be effective in making corporate change. The extent to which our colleagues have adopted the framework and begun to teach it, and the response we have received from participants on our courses for executives, gives us external confirmation of the value. We hope many readers will likewise gain benefit."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Business & Professional Publishing (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 187568073X
• ISBN-13: 978-1875680733
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,020,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Change Power: Capabilities That Drive Corporate Renewal, September 7, 2000

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A Clayfield-Hoskin (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Change Power: Capabilities That Drive Corporate Renewal (Paperback)

Tuner and Crawford provide an easily read summary of the key characteristics of successful change organisations. After extensive studies of corporations undergoing change, they have identified the key capabilities required to change. They provide useful models around this concept which are easily adopted. Lots of case study examples also provide easy reference and "trips for young players"!