Customer Reviews

Making Change Happen One Person at a Time: Assessing Change Capacity within Your Organization

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"Making Change Happen" is good, as far as it goes. The discussion of people and their ability to fit in a changing organization and promote the change is good. If you are buying this book to guide in change planning and implementation, it provides some good groundwork information. But it is not sufficient, by itself. This author uses supervisors' assessments of "change readiness", etc.. Other books and articles provide more rigorous and objective testing of staff change readiness, etc. The author also does not deal with the morale and organizational impact of forced reassignments and "outplacement" (lay-offs or firings). He even strongly implies that the staff that remain will have higher morale during the process. Obviously, he is a consultant. He has never been close to the workforce in an organization that is in the midst of an organizational change process, or one that has had lay-offs or firings in the proceeding months or years. Nor has he read the research on how those impact morale, retention of business knowledge, and, ultimately, productivity. In that sense, this book reminds me of the Hammer and Champy "Reengineering" books of the last decade; pregnant with potential, but lacking a connection with critical components of the realities of what is happening in the corporation.

An invaluable guide and a true eye opening experience. My small business means constant change and knowledge of my people. This book is very helpful and informative. As a small business owner it is critical that I find the right people and that they are in the best roles. This book has changed the way I look at my people and potential hires. If you want to improve your personnel assessment and feel confident facing the challenges of business life this is a must read.

I found this book informative. It really helped me evaluate each of my staff members individually as well as how they fit within my team.

An invaluable guide and a true eye opening experience. My small business means constant change and knowledge of my people. This book is very helpful and informative. As a small business owner it is critical that I find the right people and that they are in the best roles. This book has changed the way I look at my people and potential hires. If you want to improve your personnel assessment and feel confident facing the challenges of business life this is a must read.

A wonderful roadmap for anybody that needs to address the realities of accelerated change.

A true understanding that an entity is not merely an organization, but is in fact a living organism that needs nurturing, compassion, understanding, and firmness.

This book provides leaders and OD practioners a great framework and practical tools for driving change and topgrading talent in organizations. If you want to drive results this book is a winner.

The infinite dynamics of change are not readily evident when someone or an evaluation team sets out to forge a series of modifications in an individual, a group or an organization. When charging forward to create a new course-setting direction with fervor, some change agents are driven by tradition, expedience, budget restrictions or just plain misconceptions. The very best of individual and collective good intentions may be interspersed and circumscribed by a host of expected, but not easily attainable, intended outcomes. Small and large businesses, local governments and the most spirited educators are engaged in a never ending surge of personnel change processes that seems to work no catalytic miracles for the changes they are so diligently striving to accomplish. Fortunately, there exists an exciting new way to avoid the pitfalls of recruiting, selecting and appointing an individual to a new station in the organization and then seeing that very person fall from grace because the organization just simply did not put in place the correct strategy to use this vital human resource in the proper way. Dr. Charles H. Bishop has penned a timely treatise on one of the most important topics of our day. Dr. Bishop has brought forth a way to save time and money when organizations need to enact a significant personnel change for the good of the organization. What is the seemingly invisible assay that brings about real change with positive benefits for all? The "it" we are searching for has been refined by a shortlist of brave new world human resource people in some the nation's most progressive corporations. When one of these individuals (that is, Dr. Bishop) began to envision that changing organizations meant that the smallest unit or cog in the wheels of change had to be nourished, tested, refined and mentored by a new set of assumptions, a new distillation of personnel and leadership change factors became self-evident. In a phrase, the answer is "personal change capacity". As an education professor and practicum supervisor for prospective educational administrators enrolled for a northern Virginia private university, I have been reading with great interest the research literature associated with the role, purpose and mission of leaders for some time. When I read "Making Change Happen One Person at a Time", I knew I had stumbled on a set of solid statements related to making practical and proven personnel assessments. A careful study of Dr. Bishop's book began to unravel why some aspiring principals, or any future leader for that matter, seem to catch the vision of their place in schools or in other settings while, in contrast, other equally energetic and enthusiastic neophyte leader candidates faltered, floundered and ultimately failed to reach their leadership potential. Dr. Bishop reveals that when we attempt to place "successful" individuals in supposedly key positions in an unsystematic manner in order to cause positive changes, not only do the chosen ones typically underachieve, their failure sends a very a strong signal that we have inadvertently omitted crucial considerations of that individual's unique capacity to function in a new leadership arena. What are these crucial considerations and how do we put the important factors to use so that we make keener and crisper decisions that result in moving our visions and missions forward? Literally and figuratively, it is as easy as the following the ABCs. Dr. Bishop has formulated a schema that anyone might follow to identify pivotal players in any organization-even a small or large school. The scale of potential leaders begins with the A-players and concludes with the D-players. There are those among us that thrive on challenges and posses the wherewithal to meet and overcome the woes and throes of organizational stumbling blocks. At the opposite end of the leadership spectrum are the resisters who resemble the tares in the wheat field. They appear willing to change, but use a variety of ever-so-subtle tactical means to prevent the organization from reaching its objective. No matter the size and dimensions of an organization, everyone's desire is make the right personnel decisions in an appropriately researched manner. You will find your personnel pathways lined with practical signs and directions in Dr. Bishop's refreshing new take on the change agent's new role of assessing an individual's capacity to greet and welcome the inevitable and rapid changes coming down the organizational and external pikes.