Managing at the Speed of Change: How Resilient Managers Succeed and Prosper Where Others Fail - Hardcover

Conner, Daryl R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679406840 ISBN 13: 9780679406846

Verlag: Random House, 1993

Inhaltsangabe

This classic, newly updated, is an indispensable source for anyone–from mid-level managers to CEOs–who must execute key business initiatives quickly and effectively. Once groundbreaking and now time-honored, Managing at the Speed of Change has helped countless business leaders learn how to orchestrate transitions vital to their organizations’ success. Rather than focusing on what to change, this book’s aim is far more valuable: It shows readers how to change.
Daryl R. Conner, founder and chairman of the consulting firm Conner Partners, is a leading expert on change management. He has served as “change doctor” for clients that include non-profit enterprises, government agencies and administrations, and Fortune 500 companies in an array of industries such as Abbott Laboratories, PepsiCo, American Express, Catholic Healthcare West, JPMorgan Chase, and the U.S. Navy.
Based on Conner’s long-term research and his decades of consulting experience, Managing at the Speed of Change uses simple, easy-to-understand language and elegant visuals to explore the dynamics of change, and in doing so, teaches readers
• why major change is difficult to assimilate
• what distinguishes resilient individuals from those who suffer future shock
• how and why resistance forms
• how people become committed to change
• why organizational culture is so important to the success of change
• the roles most central to change in organizational settings
• why powerful teamwork is at the heart of achieving change objectives, and how to foster it

In this pioneering book, updated for the twenty-first century, Conner demonstrates how both individuals and organizations can develop the capacity not only to endure change but to thrive on it.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daryl R. Conner, chairman of Conner Partners, is an internationally recognized expert in the field of change management and a well-known adviser to corporate leaders engaged in executive strategic initiatives. He lives in Atlanta.

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CHAPTER 1

Resilience and the Speed of Change

The mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once observed that “the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the society in which they occur.” We live in times that reflect such turmoil. Never before has so much changed so fast and with such dramatic implications for the entire world. From the nuclear family to nuclear-arms treaties, our way of life is transforming as we live it.

At a personal level, change is intensifying dramatically for us all. We face an unsettling amount of individual change as evidenced by the alarming frequency of marriages, pregnancies, divorces, promotions, job changes, relocations, health problems, drug abuse, retirements, and family strife in our society today. Women juggle marriage, children, and careers; men are trying to be sensitive husbands and fathers after skirmishing on the corporate battlefield. In the workplace we are also confronted with massive change—ever-advancing technologies, mergers, acquisitions, rightsizing, new policies and procedures, reorganizations, and constantly shifting duties and reporting responsibilities.

Besides changes at the individual and organizational levels, there are profound national and global transitions that are not only altering our lives but shaping those of our children and grandchildren. For example:

•The primary mode of communication has shifted from typography to electronics (and now voice mail, e-mail, and text messaging), thus changing the way people think, converse, and educate themselves.

•Advanced media technology means that a significant shift in one part of the world is almost instantaneously known on the other side of the globe.

•The growth of information is occurring so fast that the “shelf life” of facts and technology has been reduced to almost nothing.

•The planet’s fragile ecosystems will no longer sustain humankind’s capacity to reproduce, its increasing demand for natural resources, or its waste generation.

•Nations bordering the North Atlantic Ocean are no longer the dominant economic and political forces in the international arena.

•Advances in health care and genetic engineering promise new ways of fighting disease, but they also have opened a Pandora’s box of ethical issues.

•Faster modes of transportation are becoming available, creating greater economic opportunities but with potentially severe psychological and environmental costs.

•The redefinition of traditional male and female, ethnic, and racial roles is reshaping the structure of our society.

•The global terrorism threat has penetrated our sense of physi-cal, psychological, and social safety and affected travel, immigration policy, and many other aspects of our personal and work lives. It has also caused many organizations to implement security measures never before deemed necessary.

PURSUING CHANGE

The magnitude of change today can prompt a doom-and-gloom vision, or it can be seen as an opportunity for a fundamental shift in how we humans define ourselves, where we are going, and how we will accomplish our goals. I have chosen the latter option. You can, too. You can make a difference in the course of events affecting you and your company today and in the future by learning how to better manage change.

Consulting to large organizations all over the world as they strive to alter key aspects of their operations has been a rich source of information for me. These engagements have afforded me the opportunity to observe, record, and analyze the behavior of thousands of managers as they attempt to implement major changes, including restructuring for competitive advantage, introducing new technology, shifting to a culture focused on quality and customer service, and many more.

When my work in this area first began to take shape in the early 1970s, it looked to me as if there were plenty of theories already available on the topic of organizational change. But I was interested in going beyond theory to find a way to understand what really works. I felt that the best way to approach this task was to actually witness people attempting to change, and to record what I saw.

Much of the research I have conducted is similar to that of field anthropologists and primate specialists. For years, the famous naturalist Dian Fossey lived in the jungles of Africa studying the behavior of gorillas. When she first began to present her findings, she didn’t claim to have discovered a new theory of how gorillas behave; she simply offered the results of her observations regarding how they lived.

Instead of going into the jungles to study apes, I have spent much of my life in corporate hallways observing and recording how humans respond to change. What I have acquired from more than thirty years of consulting, training, and research is a way of understanding what people are actually doing when they successfully implement organizational change. I have also acquired a way to pass this information on to others.

When I first began to study the behavior of people in transition, my work was limited to the United States, and I assumed that my findings reflected only the American approach to change. As I began to assist companies in Canada and Mexico, then throughout Asia, Australia, Western Europe, South America, and then in Hungary, Russia, and South Africa, I noticed some striking similarities in how people across the globe address transitions. Wherever I went, I recognized the same phenomenon—executives who successfully implement change, regardless of their location, display many of the same basic emotions, behaviors, and approaches. Those who succeed in New York or Moscow operate the same way as winners in Paris or São Paulo. And executives who fail to implement their change initiatives fall into similar traps whether they are in Hong Kong or Sydney.

People within each country demonstrate certain cultural idiosyncrasies in the way they respond to change, of course, but the basic human reactions to change are the same in everyone. By focusing on these similarities, I have found that certain actions fall into patterns, and that these patterns form a structure for understanding and describing the change process. Viewing change as a phenomenon that has a distinct shape and character, and studying individuals and organizations who manage major change well, have enabled me to synthesize the key elements of various successful change efforts. In doing so, I have determined that the single most important factor to managing change successfully is the degree to which people demonstrate resilience: the capacity to absorb high levels of change while displaying minimal dysfunctional behavior.

After several years of working independently, it became apparent that I had taken my interest in change as far as it was possible for one person to pursue alone. Further investigations of change would demand a formal research vehicle. In 1974, I formed ODR Inc. (Organizational Development Resources), a research and development company dedicated to the study of how humans respond to major changes. In 2003, ODR became Conner Partners. Building on ODR’s thirty-year legacy, Conner Partners created the first integrated framework for strategy execution—a new function and an emerging profession that is dedicated solely to the implementation of those initiatives that are critical to organizational survival and prosperity. (See the Epilogue for further information.)

Instead of viewing change as a mysterious...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1993
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0679406840
• ISBN 13: 9780679406846
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Purmerul LTD; https://strengholt.nl/en/; ; 22 Liuleburgaz Str., floor 4, app. 9; Plovdiv; Bulgarien