Change Without Pain: How Managers Can Overcome Initiative Overload, Organizational Chaos, and Employee Burnout [Hardcover]

Eric Abrahamson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 4, 2003

The author provides a refreshingly non-revolutionary approach to change based on ten years of research that shows how transitions can be effective, cost-efficient, and painless. In this powerful and refreshing book, he outlines a positive new approach to change called "creative recombination." Rather than obliterating and then reinventing anew - the change approach advocated by most gurus and "experts" over the last twenty years - creative recombination seeks sustainable, repeatable transformation by using the firm's existing resources more wisely. Abrahamson identifies five key elements that every company has - people, structures, culture, processes, and networks - and offers a broad toolkit of techniques for recombining, reusing, and redeploying these resources to achieve smoother, more cost-efficient, less painful organizational change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"a starting point for thinking about change in the paradoxical context of continuity." -- Financial Times, 8 January, 2004

...a good deal of practical advice, especially when discussing painless change in company structure or in a management team. -- The Economist, July 26th 2004

About the Author

Eric Abrahamson is professor of management at Columbia Business School. He is internationally recognized for his research on managing change and on management fads and fashions.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (December 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157851827X
• ISBN-13: 978-1578518272
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #114,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #96 in Books > Business & Investing > Organizational Behavior > Organizational Change

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Awful, February 16, 2010

By 

George Maslovsky - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Change Without Pain: How Managers Can Overcome Initiative Overload, Organizational Chaos, and Employee Burnout (Hardcover)

There was nothing slanderous about most of the posts. The school forced students to remove their post by threatening to kick them out of school and leaned on Amazon to remove the remaining. While there are many tremendous professors at Columbia, Eric Abrahamson is not one of them. I have only read part of the book but had this man as a professor and have to say he lacks the work experience necessary to teach future corporate leaders in a real world context. For a better idea on the strength of the professors at Columbia Business School I recommend reading books by Kathryn Harrigan, Joe Stiglitz, Bruce Greenwald, and Frederic Mishkin. FYI, Amazon did not allow me the option of giving zero stars.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Injects some common sense into corporate change strategies, February 13, 2004

By 

Richard M. Douglass (Atlanta, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Change Without Pain: How Managers Can Overcome Initiative Overload, Organizational Chaos, and Employee Burnout (Hardcover)

Having been a consultant with a large consulting firm for many years, I have seen many "transformational" fads come and go. Consultants and change management gurus, of course, have a certain vested interest in pushing the "new, new thing." And usually there is at least some kernel of truth or insight in these pronouncements. But marketing puffery aside, it is interesting to see how many corporations feel compelled to jump on these bandwagons. It strikes me as an example of what C.S. Lewis referred to as "chronological snobbery," that is, assuming something is no longer good simply because it is old.

Abrahamson's book tackles this notion in a very thought-provoking way. His idea of recombining things from the corporate basement, so to speak, is a nice metaphor for thinking critically and discerningly about what it is you need to accomplish and what resources you already have at your disposal to make it so. I think he provides an excellent counterbalance to the advice of many who advocate constant, dramatic change.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A controversial approach to change, February 12, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Change Without Pain: How Managers Can Overcome Initiative Overload, Organizational Chaos, and Employee Burnout (Hardcover)

Finally a management book that will create a little controversy.

Change Without Pain criticizes subtly, but unabashedly, the advocates of big, destructive, revolutionary change. Authors like Garry Hammel, Leading the Revolution, or Sarah Kaplan and Richard Foster, Creative Destruction. Remember, Hammel is the guru, and Kaplan and Foster, the McKinsey consultants, who held up Enron in their books as a model of revolutionary change.

For my money, Change Without Pain, is worth reading for two reason. Firstly, the book introduces a completely different and novel approach to change. An approach that turns almost everything written about change management on its head. The book is not the final say. It is a start, however, in a very promising direction that others will have to follow up on.

Secondly, the book is worth reading because it provides a long overdue "poke in the eye" of a small group of gurus and consultants. Advice givers like Kotter, Hammel, Kaplan and Foster whom advocated the most disrupting approach to change with little regard to the risk to companies, the financial cost to shareholders, and the human tole placed on employees executing these changes.

You can be certain of one thing, this book is going to challenge, annoy, and even infuriate the change-management establishment.