Customer Reviews

Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations

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I've been consulting for organization change for 20 years from small human service agencies to the Boeing Company. Terms of Engagement is a real winner. The principles are profound and provide a basis for change that truely involves the whole organization. I've noticed that many organization improvement efforts actually create resentment and resistance. The approaches outlined in Terms of Engagement move quickly and actually create change instead of merely plans for change. It fits old economy industry and new economy startups. Buy it, then do the work.

I first experienced this change model as a young management consultant in the late 1960s, and was overwhelmed by its effectiveness then. Over the years, I have made this approach a central tenet of how I work with client organizations and our own. Richard Axelrod's book is the best description I have seen to date of the key elements of this model and the reasons why they work. I heartily endorse that you become familiar with this book, which will undoubtedly be a standard reference for many years to come. I was particularly pleased to see how well he has combined the perspectives of many other business and nonbusiness thinkers in this area.

The key challenge to successful change is in communication. Everyone agrees on that from Axelrod to Bob Kaplan to John Kotter. The four-aspect model here is particularly well designed to overcome communication stalls and miscommunications. These aspects are widening the circle of involvement to get more ideas from more people (this is a corollary to the key observations of complexity science for self-organizing order at the boundaries of systems), connecting people to each other (in order to drop barriers to communication), creating communities for action (by establishing a mutual purpose and direction), and embracing our social concepts of democratic treatment of all (to overcome skepticism about the authenticity of engagement potential).

By way of analogy consider the writing of the original Constitution of the United States. How would this have worked out if George Washington had simply dictated what he wanted? As you can imagine, there is no way that George Washington could have come up with that document by himself. Well, that's the way most organizations try to make changes. The leader dreams up what she or he wants and tell or sells everyone else. Next, what if George had called in four of his buddies from Virginia and hired two consultants from New York? Would they have developed the Constitution we have? Probably not. It mostly would have reflected the perspectives of Virginia and New York. Even if they had, no one would have been very committed to it. The process the Constitutional Convention actually used is very similar to the one that Mr. Axelrod espouses.

The book's material is clear, the examples compelling, the warnings are timely, and the directions are appropriate.

What are the limitations then of this book? I see them in five areas: First, you have to experience this process to appreciate its power. So you can read this book all you want, and you may not "get it." My advice is to put yourself in a situation where you try out this model and find out how well it works. Second, there are a lot of other things that can go wrong that are not described here. Think about Russia. The country has gone a long way to create free markets but new enterprises are often floundering. Part of the reason is that people don't think and don't yet prefer to operate in entrepreneurial, participative terms. Many individuals and groups have that same problem. Third, the writing style of the book is too intellectual relative to its emotional intensity to engage many people in its message. Fourth, you may need a guide for the first few times you try this. Those with expertise are in relatively short supply. Fifth, if the people involved in the process do not develop their understanding of how to analyze systems-related issues and devise ideal solutions, you will still be missing a lot of potential for improvement.

You can think of this book as complementary to the ideas presented in the other superb new book on overcoming the communications stall, The Strategy-Focused Organization. I suggest that you read that book as well. The on-going measurements of the Balanced Scorecard process can be quite helpful in establishing all four aspects of the change model. If, independent of these perspectives, you also create a superior business model and strategy, you can be further aided by having irresistible forces consistently favoring your progress. Tie together those three perspectives, and you should be unbeatable.

After you have finished experiencing and applying this improved change model in your organization, I suggest that you consider how you can extend it into other organizations you care about, like the schools in your community, the charity you sit on the board of or volunteer for, and the local hospital.

May you always work openly and successfully with all stakeholders to build better solutions and implement them rapidly!

Have you ever been a part or a victim of a failed change initiative? Have you witnessed resentment or cynicism over change strategies where a new process was created by a privileged few and drilled down through the organization? Are you involved in or responsible for bringing about organizational change and afraid of making mistakes that may alienate other employees or cause needed improvements to be rejected? If so, this is the book to read!

The book provides clear and practical guidelines for changing organizations. The examples and case studies concentrate on methods to utilize the wealth of knowledge in an organization to accomplish change. The guiding principles are "Widening the Circle of Involvement, Connecting People to Each Other, Creating Communities for Action and Embracing Democratic Principles".

Examples of tools are well described and illustrated with case studies for each of the guiding principles. Examples of other popular change management strategies are also discussed, analyzed and illustrated. This book is a great field guide and reference for changing organizations responsibly. It is well written easy to read, and goes a long way towards demystifying where popular change methods fail and what to do about it.

Organizational change advocate Richard Axelrod challenges the commonly accepted change management paradigm in Terms Of Engagement: Changing The Way We Change Organizations. Axelrod draws upon his research, experience, and expertise to offer a practical and effective approaches he calls the "engagement paradigm", a system that will provide corporate leaders with a practical, principle-based strategy for creating successful change outcomes. Implementing the engagement paradigm will result in employees and managers grasping the big picture and align around a common purpose; fully distribute accountability; quickly identify performance gaps and thereby improving both productivity and customer satisfaction; spark creativity as employees, suppliers, and customers contribute their best ideas; create capacity for future changes to meet future challenges in the highly competitive and rapidly globalizing economies.

Richard Axelrod has finally moved beyond the paradigm for change that has dominated this field for the last two decades. The inherent weaknesses of the current model are exposed. The four leadership challenges Axelrod defines if an organization is to cope with ongoing change: widening the circle of involvement, connecting people to each other and ideas, creating communities for action, and embracing democratic principles, are ideal for school communities. Through real life examples and clear writing he provides readers models of how they might contribute their multiple perspectives and skills to change in their schools.

If readers can connect Axlerod's insights with Senge's new book, "Schools that Learn," they will have superb guidance on how their schools might be redesigned to meet the needs of a new age.

I am the Director of Faculty Development at a Jesuit high school in San Francisco. We are currently using Axlerod's model with great success.

Richard H. Axelrod presents a model for creating more effective change in an organization by involving everyone in the change process from the beginning. He suggests setting up large conferences with cross-functional, multidisciplinary planning and implementation groups. As this implies, he advocates combining planning and implementation, rather than creating parallel processes. He argues that the top-down approach of having a leader who sells a vision to the organization doesn't work, although the leader should be involved in the conference process. It seems shortsighted to dismiss visionary leadership, with its successful track record in various settings, yet Axelrod has organized his ideas clearly. He provides tools for using his approach, including anecdotal success stories, how-to inserts, and guidelines for following this process. His model shares some characteristics of other conference planning approaches, including "Future Search." However, we [...] recommend this engagingly written book for its appeal to executives and top managers who seek intriguing planning and change strategies.

It's very seldom I find a professional development book I can't put down. Terms of Engagement is such a book. Dick's straightforward analysis of why change efforts fall short makes clear the reasoning behind his innovative recommendations. The theory is sound; the stories bring it to life. The how-to's provide clear direction for implementing his ideas. Each principle, example and suggestion made me eager for more.

Having been privileged to work closely with Dick over the years, I have come to appreciate his keen perception and creative, collaborative solutions. He brings all of his wisdom and compassion to this writing. I believe anyone dealing with organizational change--from within the organzation or as an external consultant--will recognize familiar situations, pitfalls and opportunities, and find new ideas to spark their efforts in this book.

Is change failing? Are multiple leaders' initiatives foundering? Is vast energy being expended on change projects by roving teams of the best and the brightest? Maybe the approach is all wrong. Maybe you need ... more people.

So argues Richard Axelrod, democrat and change consultant. Believing that current change practices are too slow and bureaucratic, Axelrod asserts that there simply isn't enough engagement. In other words, after forty years in the business world - a world in which "it sometimes seems as if everything is changing at the speed of light" - the author has concluded that change efforts fail when people don't feel involved.

Whether this is a brilliant insight or a beacon of the trite and obvious is for the reader to determine. In the meantime, consider Axelrod's "engagement paradigm": widen involvement, connect people, create communities, and embrace democracy. All laudable in theory, and the author goes to great lengths to prove that such an approach doesn't cost or waste or confuse as much as a skeptic might imagine. But what does it mean? Larger meetings, fine, open-ended questions, certainly, flip charts and round tables, marvelous, but do these a paradigm make? When you look for details here you find yourself grasping at shadows. Ask for a specific action and Axelrod recommends "creating a compelling purpose." Some might find this a little vague.

Yet lying beneath the misty surface are basic assumptions, assumptions about pluralism and democracy all the more intriguing for remaining untested. Axelrod asserts for example that in large group change meetings, individuals frequently set aside their self-interest for the benefit of the organization. Perhaps, but couldn't we look to our founding fathers for another explanation? Examine the Federalist Papers and their hallowed brethren among American documents, and you'll find that democracy's strength grows not in spite of individual self-interest, but because of it. The negotiated settlement, the win-win solution, the efficient organization: people support such a "democratic" achievement because there's something in it for them.

_Terms of Engagement_ is unsubtle boosterism: of democracy, of Theory Y, and of the Axelrod Group and its Conference Model, which the book more promotes than describes. (Similarly treated are the Group's "walkthrus," a curious colloquialism from an author who eschews contractions.) If you too believe that change happens best in multitudes, pick up a copy of the book today. If not, consider why this nation is not a democracy. It's a republic.

In his Foreword, Axelrod asserts that his "is the first book to challenge the widely accepted change management paradigm. It provides leaders at all levels of the organization -- all those who initiate, design,, and implement change -- with a set of principles for bringing about change in a turbulent world. It is not a methodology, nor is it a set of techniques; rather, it is a set of principles that everyone can fall back on when faced with new and different situations." In Part One, Axelrod identifies the problems with the current change management paradigm. In effect, he demythologizes conventional thinking on this subject. In Part Two, he examines four principles for producing an engaged organization, devoting a separate chapter to each. It is important to keep in mind that the nature and extent of production (or results) will be determined almost entirely by the nature and extent of engagement throughout an organization.

In Part Three, Axelrod shares his insights and suggestions which will assist his reader during the "Getting Started" phase of the process. Also, Axelrod discusses what he calls the "minefields" on the "road to [organization-wide] engagement." He concludes with a brief, especially valuable analysis of "eight specific issues the engagement paradigm can help you tackle, including the introduction of new technology, the increase in mergers, acquisitions, and alliances, and growing dissociation from communities."

If you are now involved in any of this or are about to become involved, I recommend this book highly. Carefully select those strategies which are most appropriate to your own organization's needs and interests. Axelrod can then help you to chart or to reformulate a proper course to implement those strategies.

This is the best book and process I've ever seen for creating positive, effective change. The principles are very simple, and are all about engaging those who know best in the change that will affect them. The process is simple too - bring people together and let them define the issue or opportunity, create a better vision, and plan out the steps to make it happen. The sad thing is that most change is done in such a disengaging way. It usually goes like this - someone has a "brilliant idea" (this is usually a top executive), they charter a small trusted team to come up with a plan to make it happen (never asking for any help is important here), and then they roll out the brave new world to all, and spend a couple of years trying without success to ram it down their throats. Sound familiar? Did it work?

Unlike the very high failure rate of the traditional change model, the Axelrod model is highly successful. I've used it personally on large scale changes involving thousands of people, and it has never failed. Not only does it not fail, it consistently leads to even better ideas and improvements than we had in mind when we started. Best of all when you are done, it creates an appetite for even more change because people trust in you, each other, and the process to make more positive changes happen.

So, if you are faced with the need or desire to make change, this is the Rosetta Stone.