Customer Reviews

Making Change Stick: Twelve Principles for Transforming Organizations

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Author and consultant Richard Reale wants to help your organization to become sticky! In Making Change Stick he defines sticky as the ability to accomplish and sustain change. Reale correctly observes that leaders tend to focus on the technical side of change but typically ignore the human or people side of change. But, change is personal and involves human emotion and commitment. Any process that emphasizes technical skills at the expense of soft skills is doomed to failure. To provide a balance, Making Change Stick offers the reader twelve principles for making change effective and lasting. These principles are based on a philosophy that long-term success is built on a foundation of a culturally open system. Reale defines this as, "ready to adapt as necessary to prosper under any market conditions." He further adds this culture should be "dynamically adaptive and supportive of the needs of customers, employees, and shareholders."

The twelve principles for making change stick are a series of repeating patterns that help an organization to become change-capable. Reale believes that one or more of the twelve principles have been violated or ignored when change does not last in an organization. For example, principle number six is confront fear. Many leaders are unaware of why individuals are fearful of change and how to openly discuss it. A healthy culture nurtures an environment where workers feel safe to discuss their fears. It is when these fears are gracefully exposed, they can be confronted by the individual, and their feelings defused.

After the twelve principles are discussed, Making Change Stick concludes with a couple of beneficial chapters. One outlines how to create a culture that sustains change. Reale is a strong proponent of establishing a guidance team or transformation management group to facilitate this need. The final chapter offers sage advice to organizational leaders, and encourages them to use their emotional intelligence to relinquish control throughout the organization to committed and competent followers. Each chapter ends with some questions to ponder and practical ways to put each principle into practice. Reale also spices the book with his personal experiences, quotations and charts to develop his major points.

Making Change Stick is a practical primer for anyone involved in the change process within an organization. It provides many valuable points that together show how connected the entire company must be for change to be lasting and successful. It reinforces why change is both a technical and people oriented process. If you are personally involved in any change process, this book will help it to all make sense and help you to be a productive part of the process.

In Making Change Stick, Richard C. Reale introduces twelve principles for transforming organizations. These principles urge us to know where we are going, challenge our thinking, involve and be involved, align our culture, honor emotions, confront fear, don't wait for perfection, communicate intentionally, set people up for success, catch people doing something right, measure stuff that matters and lead from the heart. Reale's principles drive the reader toward embracing organizational and individual change as a choice - one chooses to change or not. Reale coins the term sticky change to refer to those changes that become institutionalized as a part of the corporate culture - the Company DNA.

While Reale's twelve principles seem trite and shallow on the surface, they are filled with depth and insight. Being obvious doesn't make them any less true or lessen their impact when properly implemented, it simply means that we should have done them all along.

I recommend Making Change Stick by Richard C. Reale. His simple yet effective blueprint for embracing change draws the leader toward an endgame strategy of helping the organization choose to change - a willing change that will be embraced and embodied by the organization.

Those who are preparing to launch change initiatives or who have only recently done so would be well-advised to consider the truth of what Peter Drucker suggested more than 40 years ago: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." In this volume, Richard C. Reale identifies and then examines twelve principles that can help to guide and inform the formulation and execution of initiatives that can transform any organization, whatever its size and nature may be. He devotes a separate chapter to each principle, none of which is a head-snapping revelation nor does Reale make any such claim.

Of special interest to me is his clever use of various reader-friendly devices such as "Questions to Ponder" and "putting the Principle into Practice" with which he concludes chapters. They focus on key issues and summarize key points that facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of the material after a first reading. They also serve as "gut checks" that enable the reader to evaluate the progress of change initiatives and to measure their effectiveness throughout various stages of the change initiative process. I also appreciate the provision of relevant quotations from various sources. For example:

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein

"On a group of theories one can found a school; but on a group of values one can found a culture." Ignazio Silone

"We see the world not as it is, but as we are." The Talmud

"Scalded cats fear even cold water." Thomas Fuller

"One great mistake is to try to extract from each person virtues which he does not possess, neglecting the cultivation of those which he does have." Hadrian

All change initiatives encounter resistance and many barriers are the result of what James O'Toole has aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." Reale offers a number of strategies and tactics to overcome resistance but reiterates throughout his narrative of setting crystal clear objectives ("know where you are going"), validate the assumptions and premises on which the action plan is based ("challenge your thinking"), establish a broad and deep base of participation by others ("Involve and be involved"), maintain proper alignment of initiatives and resources with the given strategy to achieve objectives ("align your culture'), and rigorously monitor progress throughout the entire process ("measure stuff that matters"). I presume to add that unless and until those involved, especially leaders, nail these and other fundamentals, much of the resistance to change initiatives will be justified.

Presumably Reale agrees with me that it would be a fool's errand to read his book and then attempt to adopt and then apply all of the material he provides. Think of his book as an operations manual for organizational transformation. It can guide and inform both the planning and subsequent implementation of a plan that is most appropriate to the needs, resources, and ultimate objectives of the given organization, whatever its size and nature may be.

I think his book will be of great value to all decision-makers but especially to those who have little (if any) understanding of the mindset, perspectives, and analytical skills that effective change agents have. They see each problem as a challenge, of course, but also as a learning opportunity. They realize that what those who comprise a team know is much greater than what any one member does. And finally, they have patience as well as determination when facing the resistance their efforts will inevitably encounter.

Two figures stand out when reading this book: twelve and twenty. What do they have in common? The same man, Richard C. Reale. For twenty years, he's studied why change fails and why it succeeds. Then he boiled down his knowledge base into twelve principles that are absolutely necessary if change is to happen correctly and last in an organization. The amazing thing is that these principles will not only ensure the success of a transformation, but will pay dividends in the long run, by having made an organization more change-capable.

So what's missing? What's causing organizations to fail when implementing change? The most common reason is the "failure to consider the human side of change." It's easy enough to draw the roadmap. The hardest part is the execution, the fulfillment of that plan. If you don't believe it, just look at the last time you resolved to do something. What was harder: making the decision and putting some thought into how to best achieve it, or actually doing what you planned?

The twelve principles outlined in this book allow organizational leaders to focus on the people, and to empower them to bring change to fruition. It's about setting down the right process for change, and following along closely, making sure change is proceeding as planned. It's about walking the talk, and encouraging people to do the same by praising their efforts to change, and setting them up for success. It's about monitoring the right metrics, the ones that will tell you how you're really doing. In theory, it doesn't sound hard, but in practice, it's another story. Fortunately, the author explains every one of the twelve principles in detail, and the examples he gives clearly illustrate the point. Inspirational quotes from notable personalities are also provided, to help drive home the point.

This book is a wonderful resource. Twenty years of "on-the-job" experience can't be wrong. The author's expertise shows, and will help guide the book's readers toward that great goal of organizational change, which is a hard goal to achieve indeed. If individual change is hard, organizational change is orders of magnitude harder - but this book will show you how to do it successfully. Get it, and achieve lasting change!

Based on his experience, the author has written a top-notch, practical guide to successful organizational change, centered on twelve principles:
1. Know where you are going
2. Challenge your thinking
3. Involve and be involved
4. Align your culture
5. Honor emotions
6. Confront fear
7. Don't wait for perfection
8. Communicate intentionally
9. Set people up for success
10. Catch people doing something right
11. Measure stuff that matters
12. Lead from the heart

A chapter is devoted to each of these principles. Each chapters concludes with a set of questions and concise guidelines for putting the principle into practice.

Two concluding chapters concern an approach to creating an internal structure for change and the role of leadership. The central theme is that by applying all of these principles, "sticky" change can be achieved--change that is accomplished and sustained.

This is a to-the-point guide for any leader faced with the challenge of organizational change. Highly recommended!

It is always problematic taking on change endeavours. You spend lots of time and money making the change only to have behaviours revert. This book provides concrete examples of how to keep you change in place. It was very helpful.

Very readable and a very important read for those charged with managing and maintaining continual improvement efforts.

This is an area I have responsiblity for in my small manufacturing company. The author gives readers practical, no-nonsense advice on how to keep improved processes from slipping back to their old condition.

"Making Change Stick" is an excellent resource for leaders at all levels of the organization. All of us who have worked to make changes in our organizations know how difficult this process can be. Often leadership implements either the "task" methodology or the "maintenance" methodology in creating change and then wonders why the change efforts fail. In fact, Mr. Reale recognizes that it is essential for leaders to honor both the task and maintenance roles in order to create the impetus for change. His 12 principles encompass the newest scientific prinicples that corporate leaders need to understand and practice. I heartily recommend this excellent book, both because of its readability and its applicability. You must read this book!

Change is one of those notoriously nebulous things that companies have a very hard time managing. For most companies, change is a mysterious thing - sometimes it happens, most of the time, it doesn't and nobody really knows why.

Rich Reale takes the mystery out of the change process. In his book "Making Change Stick", he breaks change down into 12 manageable, bite-sized chunks. Each chapter is supplemented with real life examples, making the change concepts something managers can actually digest and use when facing their day to day change management challenges.

Rich Reale has written a marvelous book. He has precise and very specific pointers about how to succeed in managing any kind of group--and I'm in education not business--and it's loaded with anecdotes of the experiences he's had. Further, he stresses honesty and frankness in all dealings. How refreshing! Read this book and change how you deal with the people you work with every day.