Rock Stephen: Vodič za menadžere: upravljanje promjenom

Stephen Rock: A Manager's Guide: Managing Change

The speed at which work is done, and at which life flows, is getting faster and faster. Sure, I can wonder how my American newborn has developed so quickly into a young woman capable of speaking Chinese, but it's much harder to think about how world politics, technology, and economics have changed in the last twenty years.

The leaders of your company observe this speed of change and strive to always be one step ahead. Or if they don't even try to be one step ahead, they try desperately to keep up with the best. It's only a matter of time before global macroscopic change affects your workplace. It is impossible to deny the obvious truth that only change is constant. Competing in an ever-accelerating world imperatively creates the need for organization: the only way to succeed in the market is to be able to adapt quickly.

Although the world is changing at a tremendous speed, this does not mean that you can take shortcuts to progress faster. Every business must manage change, and doing it well has never been more important. Depending on the degree of your ability to change quickly and effectively, your business will find itself in one of three possible states: suffering, barely surviving, or thriving in this modern age. This book shows you how to achieve sustainable, effective organizational change and how to do it effectively.

The first chapter outlines the business case for organizational change management. Management change is not just consulting sophistry. Engaging the company's resources in the undertaking of implementing change yields benefits that far exceed the cost of the initial effort.
The second chapter talks about how organizational change begins with personal change. Getting a group of people to change their way of thinking requires understanding how individuals mentally process change.
The third chapter returns to the concepts (notions) of organizational change and encourages you to focus on the ultimate goal or vision.
The 4th chapter discusses how you can ensure the conditions for your change program to be effective. Effective change requires a comprehensive alignment of goals, work methods and people. This chapter is a detailed discussion of how the organization works, how people are organized to do the work, and how trained individuals support the project.
Chapter Five provides an approach to how to structure a change project, and Chapters Six through Ten discuss five key strategies for any change initiative. These are Awareness, Understanding, Participation, Leverage, and Measurement.
Chapter Eleven discusses how you can keep everyone working on the right things with an effective governance structure.
Finally, Chapter Twelve recaps all of the previous chapters with a few hard lessons I've learned, and some words of encouragement for you as you guide your partners through change.

The idea behind the Briefcase books is to give you practical information written in a friendly tone. The chapters are relatively short, deal with tactical issues and include plenty of examples.