Product Description

Leading Minds and Landmark Ideas In An Easily Accessible Format

From the preeminent thinkers whose work has defined an entire field to the rising stars who will redefine the way we think about business, The Harvard Business Review Paperback Series delivers the fundamental information today's professionals need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #442111 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 178 pages

Customer Reviews

Why some change initiatives succeed...and others fail

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes that comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarded experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section that usually includes suggestions of other sources that some readers may wish to explore.

In this volume, the reader is provided with eight articles whose authors provide a variety of perspectives on how to lead an organization through a process of significant change while minimizing fear, frustration, and resistance. All of the articles first appeared in the HBR over an extended period of time, from March-April, 1992, to October, 2005; some but remarkably little of the material is dated. Here are some of the important business issues to which four contributors direct their (and our) attention:


Which seem to be the most common mistakes made by executives? ("Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail," John P. Kotter)
Comment: Kotter identifies eight and suggests how to avoid or repair them.

How to focus only on what is most important? ("Tipping Point Leadership," W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne)
Comment: The co-authors of Blue Ocean Strategy explain how "tipping points" can result in fundamental changes when a sufficient number of people embrace and support a powerful idea. They examine how a newly appointed police commissioner, in less than two years, turned New York into the safest large city in the nation by following a four-step process to bring about rapid, dramatic, and lasting change with limited resources.

Why is follow-through "the DNA of decisive cultures"? ("Conquering a Culture of Indecision," Ram Charan)
Comment: In all of his various books and articles, Charan stresses the importance of making correct decision and then taking effective action to achieve desired results, whatever they may be. To change a culture of decision, he insists, leaders must ask hard questions such as "How robust and effective are our social operating mechanisms?" GE has forged a system of ten tightly linked operating mechanisms that, Charan suggests, comprise its "secret weapon."

Why are leaders sometimes "on" and other times Not? (""Moments of Greatness: Entering the Fundamental State of Leadership," Robert E. Quinn)
Comment: Quinn identifies four "awareness-raising questions" which leaders must ask and then answer honestly so that they can challenge themselves to have a positive impact on their own lives and on those around them. These questions "often lead to high-performance outcomes, and repetition of high-performance outcomes can eventually create a high-performance culture."

Which factors correlate with the success or failure of change initiatives? ("The Hard Side of Change Management," Harold L. Sirkin, Perry Keenan, and Alan Jackson)
Comment: Based on their research on change initiatives at 225 companies, the co-authors of this article concluded that it is possible to predict the probable results of such initiatives by considering what they characterize as four "DICE factors" within a diagnostic framework. Once the evaluation has been completed, the executives involved can then "shine a spotlight on the interventions that would improve their chances of success."

As I indicated earlier, at least some of the material in this volume is dated. However, the insights shared in these articles as well as in the other remain relevant. Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out the recently published Harvard Business Review on Making Smarter Decisions as well as other series titles in the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series such as those Effective Communication, the Innovative Enterprise, Leadership at the Top, and Measuring Corporate Performance.

Also Michael George's Authentic Leadership and True North, Jack Welch and Suzy Welch's Winning, Michael Ray's The Highest Goal, Ram Charan's Know-How, and Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman's X-Teams, Richard Ogle's Smart World, and James O'Toole's The Executive's Compass.