Synopses & Reviews
How have leaders of change in companies like American Express, AT&T, Ford, and Xerox successfully navigated the often frightening and turbulent seas of large-scale change? Based on the authors' ten years of consulting experience with corporations facing organizational upheavals,
Discontinuous Change is designed to build a diagnostic framework for understanding, managing, and evaluating change. The authors explore the key issues of effective leadership, culture change, motivating employees and overcoming resistance, and finding ways to sustain competitiveness by initiating, not just responding to, change.
"Few executives expect the future to be more stable than the present. Yet, few have seriously begun the long journey of rethinking and redesigning themselves and their organizations for the future. For those who have, Discontinuous Change, while not eliminating the inevitable uncertainty that is part of the journey, can at least make it less perilous and vastly more comprehensible. For those who have not, the insights and methods presented by David Nadler and his associates will, hopefully, engAnder the courage to embark."
—Peter M. Senge, director of the Center for Organizational Learning, MIT's Sloan School of Management and author of The Fifth Disciple
Review
"Few executives expect the future to be more stable than the present. Yet, few have seriously begun the long journey of rethinking and redesigning themselves and their organizations for the future. For those who have, Discontinuous Change, while not eliminating the inevitable uncertainty that is part of the journey, can at least make it less perilous and vastly more comprehensible. For those who have not, the insights and methods presented by David Nadler and his associates will, hopefully, engAnder the courage to embark." (Peter M. Senge, director of the Center for Organizational Learning, MIT's Sloan School of Management and author of The Fifth Discipline)
"This book addresses the most important challenge facing senior executives today--the management of change. David Nadler and his colleagues at Delta have done a terrific job of drawing from their extensive experience to develop powerful, original, and highly useful strategies for action. A compelling 'must read' for the leadership of American enterprises." (Paul A. Allaire, chairman & CEO, Xerox Corporation)
Synopsis
Explores the practical lessons learned from internationally renowned companies to bring about lasting and fundamental organizational transformation, providing a useful set of "field-tested" concepts and techniques for anyone seeking to promote change. In-depth interviews with such key corporate change leaders as Bob Allen of AT&T and Jamie Houghton of Corning, Inc., provide valuable insight and firsthand advice on the role CEOs and leadership teams can play in organizational transformation.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-284) and index.
About the Author
DAVID A. NADLER, ROBERT B. SHAW and A. ELISE WALTON are members of Delta Consulting Group, a New York-based firm whose practice focuses on the management of strategic organizational change. Nadler and Shaw are coauthors (with Marc S. Gerstein) of Organizational Architecture: Designs for Changing Organizations (Jossey-Bass 1992). Nadler is also coauthor (with David Kearns) of Prophets in the Dark: How Xerox Reinvented Itself and Beat Back the Japanese (1993).
Table of Contents
THE CHANGING NATURE OF CHANGE.
Change Leadership: Core Competency for the Twenty-First Century (D. Nadler & R. Shaw).
Types of Organizational Change: From Incremental Improvement to Discontinuous Transformation (D. Nadler & M. Tushman).
The Challenge of Discontinuous Change (D. Nadler & M. Tushman).
THE PRACTICE OF DISCONTINUOUS CHANGE.
The Fundamentals of Change Management (K. Morris & C. Raben).
The Essence of Discontinuous Change: Leadership, Identity, and Architecture (R. Shaw).
Staging Discontinuous Change (A. Walton).
Sustaining Change: Creating the Resilient Organization (M. Marks & R. Shaw).
KEY LEVERAGE POINTS FOR DISCONTINUOUS CHANGE.
Generative Strategy: Crafting Competitive Advantage (A. Walton).
Organizational Architecture: Designing for High Performance (D. Nadler).
Transformative Culture: Shaping the Informal Organization (A. Walton).
Business Processes: Embracing the Logic and Limits of Reengineering (R. Shaw & M. Maletz).
Executive Development: Finding and Growing Champions of Change (R. Ketterer & M. Chayes).
LEADING CHANGE.
Beyond the Heroic Leader (D. Nadler).
The Emerging Role of the CEO (J. Heilpern).
A "Virtual" Interview with Five Change Leaders (R. Shaw, et al.).
Conclusion: The Lessons of Discontinuous Change (R. Shaw & A. Walton).