Customer Reviews

The 7 Levels of Change: The Guide to Innovation in the World's Largest Corporations

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is one of the best I've read about how to change the way you think and do work in the business world. It triggers a lot of ideas about how to capture and develop ideas for commercial value, and it gives you a framework for actually "doing something different". There are many good examples for personal and professional growth, and for organizational development. Corporate Leadership Development programs should include it as "required reading", and as a guide to showing employees just what it looks and feels like to be a leader (a Thought Leader) in today's fickle, ever-changing business environment. Use it like a true WORKBOOK; write in it, skip around, make slides from it, experiment with it, copy parts of it - rewrite it in your own thoughts and words!

I found this book while purchasing another book. I took a gamble and bought them both. It was the better of the two. Smith provides a structure, understanding, and tools the enable rapid implementation. This books does more than make you feel good. I am looking forward to telling others about it and putting its ideas to work.

I currently use this book as a text for an interdisciplinary Graduate level course at Penn State University. The students come from a variety of backgrounds including Engineering, Management and Education, and they rave about this book! Not only does it provide powerful tools for "thinking different" and "thinking about thinking", but it also gives plenty of dynamic examples of how real people use these tools in the real world. My students give this book an A+ and so do I!

The toughest things to change in any business are your people and their processes. Today's fast changing environment is sending us tremendous amounts of information to digest and respond to. These changes can prove overwhelming without an enlightened leader to mark the path for their business organization. Rolf Smith has examined the necessary steps to lead every member of your organization, regardless of style or personality, through the enormous, necessary changes required of all successful businesses. The expression, "Change, or Die" has never had more meaning than today. This book proved very useful to my organization's implementation of new software systems. We were able to develop several approaches to accommodate the different learning styles/types based on Mr. Smith's observations and recommendations. Excellent read, entertaining, well organized and especially appreciated the wide margins to allow us to use this book as a workbook as well! The margins are full and immensely valuable to our group. We've all added comments to a plan that was tested against the book...chapter by chapter. I highly recommend this book and look forward to any additional future books by this author. Mr. Smith, kudos and thanks for the margins...excellent, excellent change...it's graduated from our bookshelf to our desktop...we have plans to use it with our consulting clients to document and develop their own successful plans for change!

Change is a part of life, yet most of the books on this subject tell you how to deal with the aftermath, as its victim. In this energizing book, Rolf Smith's energizing style helps you chart your path, be it personal or corporate. Not the typical institutional disection of subject material, Smith's book is as alive as his lectures: daring you to get involved in creating your future and push the envelope on your limits. The book is full of information but light enought that a quick read will get you into and bring you back for more.

Truly a handbook for change agents!

Rolf Smith, this book, and an 8-day Thinking Expedition (The School for Innovators) led by Rolf in the mountains surrounding Estes Park, Colorado (October 1998) has changed my life and put me on the path to personal and professional growth and accomplishment.

I am Director of Creativity and the Arts at Northwood University in Midland, MI. As one of my responsibilities, I am executive director of the University's Alden B. Dow Creativity Center. In July of 1998 the center invited Rolf Smith as keynote speaker for the 9th International Conference on Creativity in Colleges and Universities. His address, based on his book The Seven Levels of Change, was spellbinding. I personally was so inspired that I bought the book and read it cover to cover, then I signed up to participate in a Thinking Expedition through Rolf's School for Innovators.

What an experience! Rolf's book talks about expeditions, summits, different and change. On expedition, I actually lived the tenets of the book. 16 hours a day (sometimes more) our team focused on problems we were attempting to solve. This, combined with learning and using mountain climbing skills to conquer perceived fears, learning team building skills and working towards conquering summits together that could never be conquer alone reinforced and put into practice ideas introduced in the book.

Since completing the School for Innovators, I have completely revamped the curriculum for my Creative Behavior course. I threw out my syllabus and replaced the principle text with The Seven Levels of Change. I believe this book is that important. My intention is to take my students on a Thinking Expedition of their own using the Thinking Guide techniques I learned from Rolf. All Northwood students are business students - future entrepreneurs - and the skills Rolf discusses in the book, and puts into practice on expedition, are the very skills these students will need to survive and succeed in a world doubling its knowledge base every 7 years.

This book also delves into the realm of psychology through discussions of psychometric instruments that promote and examine intra and interpersonal communication skills and an understanding of HOW a person is creative. One of my "ME, Inc." goals following the School for Innovators was to become qualified to administer, score and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI), which I have accomplished. The outcomes of these psychometric indicators provide static scores, which by themselves mean nothing. The theory behind these instruments, however, allows individuals to understand not only how THEY are creative (KAI) and why they tend to think and perceive the way they do (MBTI), but - and perhaps more importantly - how OTHERS are creative and why they tend to think and perceive the way they do. With an understanding of the theory behind the instruments, the outcomes take on a dynamic quality that means everything when it comes to improving the communication process between individuals and teams.

These are important factors to understand and use when building or working on a team, or when presenting an idea to an internal or external client. In fact, both of the psychometric instruments discussed by Rolf in The Seven Levels of Change are as necessary tools used everyday in the corporate world to help teams discover and implement Level 7 (DifFferent) Change. The type of change that establishes individuals and corporations as major players and leaders - as change agents - in a world increasingly faced with challenge and change.

I recommend this book highly and without reservation. If your goal is different results for your company or yourself, then this book if a fount of information, theories, concepts and ideas to get you there.

I'm not big on theory--just give me the facts in a simple, easy to understand format. The 7 Levels of Change delivers big time. The tools work. The Mindshift Model and the other "theory" topics make sense to a layman like me. I am a Senior Manager in a major corporation and we are using the book and Rolf's Thinking Expeditions to help us crawl out of our conservative patterns to become more competitive in this constantly changing marketplace and the world of 21st Century business. Rolf's book is an excellent tool to help our managers begin to Think and to learn to Think Diffferently!

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning how to live with the changes in thier lives. The only constant in our lives today is Change, and Rolf's book is a simple workbook not only on managing that change, but indeed in preparing you to become a catalyst FOR change.

Smith's outstanding book is based on his considerable experience as a "change agent" and innovator. It is a "how to" book for people, corporations or organizations who are facing challenges they don't know how to deal with. It is a book about RESULTS. More specifically it is a book about how to achieve "DIFFfERENT" results (three "f's" intended). If you need to get difFferent results (presumably BETTER results) and you don't know how to achieve those results given the resources available to you, READ THIS BOOK! Once you read the book you must start doing things diffFerently. Because, if you keep doing what you have always done, you will continue to "get" what you always got. If your goal is diffFerent results...READ THIS BOOK. Mandatory addition for any "change agent" or "change sponsor's" library.

Rolf Smith's book is an excellent guide to the spectrum of change. I found the resistance/acceptance linkage to Myers-Briggs personality type especially powerful, helping the change agent understand who might resist the proposed change and how hard they might resist. When combined with Myers-Briggs education, I have found the 7-levels to be an effective tool for making groups aware of their inherent resistance as a preparation for embarking on the change process. In addition, the thinking tools given in the book provide some excellent ways to get "unstuck". I highly recommend it.

This is an outstanding book if you are interested in learning or teaching others how to think "outside the box." I use this book now in my critical thinking course I teach in college. It constitutes a fine review of the levels of thinking attained as one becomes more educated and more rational.

I highly recommend this book. It not only contains numerous valuable ideas, but is also fun to read. In fact, it is one of the books I think should be required reading for all adults.