Taking
Charge of Change: 10 Principles for Managing People and Performance
by Douglas K. Smith
Who Should Read This Book
- Executives and Managers whose company future depends on change
- Change agents in the private or public sector
- Technologists
- Policy makers
- Academics
- Journalists seeking a better grasp of change
- Anyone interested in the the principles of change
Why You Should Read This Book
Four
out of five change efforts fail because leaders violate key principles
of performance-driven change, principles such as:
• The primary objective of change is performance, not change.
• The scarcest resources in a period of change are energy and meaningful
language (not money or talent)
• Those who would lead change must base their leadership in the courage
to be the change they wish to bring about.
This book
lay out the key principles and disciplines required to use performance
as the driver of making change happen in organizations. By using
performance to drive change, organizations in dozens of industries have
worked with Doug to deliver impacts on customers, employees, shareholders
and other supporters that routinely measure more than a 100:1 return on
the cost of those efforts.
These results from performance-driven change are why Doug's work was cited in High Impact Consulting as delivering the highest impact of all consultants discussed.
Reviews
"THE BEST BOOK ON CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN CURRENT RELEASE. Smith combines a sweeping view of organizational behavior with a concrete agenda for overcoming obstacles that doom most change efforts. - Leader to Leader
"Change is never easy, but Smith's book begins where others leave off. He offers practical, realistic guidance needed by leaders -- from CEO on down -- who want to take personal responsibility for guiding change in themselves and others." - Charles Perrin, CEO, Duracell
"A book to read. If you are involved with change or trying to manage change, you will not only read it, but study it and use it everyday as a daily companion." - John S. Reed, Chairman and CEO, Citibank
"In
business, reengineering is the idiom of the day. Brought to prominence
by Michael Hammer and James Champy (Reengineering the Corporation, HarperBusiness,
1993), reengineering calls for an organization to examine itself and its
processes. Ironically, whatever the impetus, 70 percent of all reengineering
efforts result in failure. In this work,
Smith, a management consultant and coauthor of The Wisdom of Teams (LJ
2/1/93), attempts to move reengineering in a more positive direction and
provides a syllabus for understanding and implementing a reengineering
effort.For Smith, the emphasis is on people and performance. Change is
never easy, and the value of the book is in the real situations and examples
where change has been attempted, sometimes successfully, sometimes not
(lessons can be learned from failure). Aside from being an excellent primer
with clearly illustrated models, the last chapter, dealing with personal
leadership, is noteworthy. Any organization contemplating a change effort
should read this ... before taking the journey."
- Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia
"This book provides the diagnostic tools managers need to assess their particular needs for change, and then the tool kit required to implement the changes one wants to see." - DLC: Organizational Change - Management.
"This
is clearly the
best book about the practical side of Change Management I've read
so far (and I've read more then 20 by now). This book really helps me
in my day-to-day work as a Change Manager. Smith has closed a big gap
in the Change Management literature, this is the most practical book you
can look for! Highly recommended."
- Amazon.com reviewer, Thomas Titura (Traisen, Austria)
"I found the book to be extremely informative. Douglas Smith has done a masterfull job of creating a step by step guide for the process of both Creating and Managing Change in any organization. He also points out why many Change Efforts fail. The 10 step guide that he has created should help us all avoid the common pitfalls of this process and help greatly improve our odds of success. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is either thinking about starting a change effort or currently in the midst of one now" - Amazon.com Review
Books by Douglas K. Smith
On Value and Values : Thinking Differently
About We in an Age of Me Douglas K. Smith
The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance
Organization
J. R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith
The Discipline of Teams: A Mindbook-Workbook
for Delivering Small Group Performance J. R. Katzenbach, Douglas K.
Smith.
Make
Success Measurable: A Mindbook-Workbook for Managing Performance Douglas
K. Smith
Fumbling
the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer
Douglas K. Smith, R. C. Alexander
Taking
Charge of Change: 10 Principles for Managing People and Performance
Douglas K. Smith
Sources of the African Past
David Robinson, Douglas K. Smith
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Christian Sarkar