Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Leadership for the Common Good) [Hardcover]

Robert Kegan (Author), Lisa Laskow Lahey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 13, 2009 | Series: Leadership for the Common Good

A recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. Desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive.

Given that the status quo is so potent, how can we change ourselves and our organizations?

In Immunity to Change, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey show how our individual beliefs--along with the collective mind-sets in our organizations--combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. By revealing how this mechanism holds us back, Kegan and Lahey give us the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can bring our organizations forward with us.

This persuasive and practical book, filled with hands-on diagnostics and compelling case studies, delivers the tools you need to overcome the forces of inertia and transform your life and your work.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, coauthors of How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, have been research and practice collaborators for twenty-five years. Lahey is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. Kegan is the Associate Director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group and a founding principal of Minds at Work, a leadership-learning professional services firm.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 340 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press; 1 edition (January 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1422117367
• ISBN-13: 978-1422117361
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,001 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #62 in Books > Business & Investing > Organizational Behavior > Workplace

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "We have met the enemy and he is us." February 22, 2009

By The Ginger Man VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Not simply a book about organizational transformation, Immunity to Change is a challenging analysis of how our well-developed methods of processing information and experience become barriers that hinder our attempts to achieve adaptive change. The first section of the book describes the theory and can be pretty tough going. The second applies the theory to case studies of organization change. The last is a primer on how to detect and overcome change immunity in your own organization.

At the risk of being overly reductive, I will try to summarize the theory.
People deal with fear and anxiety as a normal part of life. They don't feel this fear most of the time because they have created effective internal anxiety management systems. Those frameworks for evaluating experience are beneficial and necessary but can also form a hidden barrier to the desire to achieve adaptive change. The development of a more complex mental framework (the "self-transforming mind") help the individual recognize the filtering effect and limitations of his/her own frame of reference. This recognition will allow the individual to begin to negate the effects of an internally imposed change immunity.

Looked at this way, any change which is adaptive rather than technical will, as a matter of course, put at risk "a way of knowing the world that also serves as a way of managing a persistent, fundemental anxiety." The authors argue that we can only succeed with adaptive changes by recognizing the seriousness of the internal challenge we face. The desired change can put at risk "what has been a very well-functioning way of taking care of ourselves."

This all begins to explain why diets fail, smokers continue their habit in the face of a life threatening diagnosis or a manager does not increase flexibility even if his/her job depends on so doing.

If the authors are wrong, reading this book may add unnecessary complexity to our efforts to affect the change process. If they are correct, however, they are providing the beginnings of a critical understanding of the barriers to fundemental change as well as a methodology both to detect and resolve the problem.

Many business books present somewhat simplistic reformulations of problems with which managers have long wrestled. This book, on the other hand, offers a complex psychological and epistemological methodology to detect the seemingly insurmountable barrier to individual and organizational change. I found the arguments insightful and compelling but think it unlikely I could apply the approach suggested in section 3 without the assistance of a professional coach. Given that caveat, if the outputs can be as significant as the authors suggest, it would be worth the cost and the effort.

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A unique approach to developing leaders that works! February 27, 2009

By Robert Goodman

Format:Hardcover

I write this review from the perspective of an Executive Coach who has been practicing for 15 years and who has used this methodology with executives/leaders over the past three years. I can vouch that it works, not only with individual leaders but in a team development context as well. Working well means that individuals have changed behaviors; in the case of the team, that it learned to overcome difficult communication challenges resulting in a measured increase in trust among its members.

In clear language, Kegan and Lahey lay out a step by step methodology that facilitates a person's conscious understanding of his or her intentions, aspirations and goals to an identification of hidden "competing commitments", which may unintentionally hinder reaching these goals. The articulation of these competing commitments ultimately lead to an uncovering of the assumptions, beliefs and systems of meaning which can then be critically evaluated for their ability to promote or hinder success in the achievement of the goals and aspirations that anchor the process.

Their methodology helps people to reflect on themselves and their competing committments in a clear way. As an Executive Coach, I have repeatedly observed that leaders are limited most significantly by their inability to not only take the time to reflect but to know how best to use this reflection space. I also appreciate the fact that Lahey and Kegan link their methodology to a theory of development,demonstrating the process of increasing complexity of mind. This important link between practice and theory moves the user from an increase in self awareness (a very important step) to a broadening of how the leader thinks and acts.

I and my clients find their methodology very user friendly, specific and actionable. There are distinct actions one can take, experiments to design and run. It is an active process; the act of designing and running learning experiments while engaging others in the process puts the developer in the driver's seat encouraging agency and ownership for learning. Many of my clients have expressed excitement at their self generated discoveries. Other contributions: the positive frame and non-judgmental stance of their methodology bring people to their big assumptions gently, maximizing receptivity to learning and change. "Defenses" potentially can relax, respecting individual needs relative to the pace of change.

This is a very important tool for any Executive Coach's tool box, yet it is more than at tool. It is a way into developing a "bigger" world from which to lead others and that's what leaders need most.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Greater Wisdom February 27, 2009

By T. Thresher

Format:Hardcover

I am delighted to give my highest recommendation to Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's newest book Immunity to Change. I have used their material (How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work) for nearly eight years in my capacity as a minister and in my work as a business school instructor. I have observed remarkable changes in individual lives using these tools.
Immunity to Change takes Kegan/Lahey wisdom to the next level. It elaborates and expands their tools for dealing with the invisible assumptions that run our individual lives. It clearly spells out how to create safe, effective tests of these Big Assumptions to subtly shift our foundational perspective. It then extrapolates these tools to team process to help us discover and change the Big Assumptions that stifle team productivity.
It is rare that a tool serves both spiritual development and the deepening of leadership capacity. This is one of those rare tools, expressed clearly and passionately. Buy it and enjoy.
Rev. Tom Thresher, Ph.D.