Change or Die: How to Transform Your Organization from the Inside Out, by D. M. Dealy and A. R. Thomas. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006, 101 pages. $26.95 (hardcover)
✍ Scribed by Ti'eshia Moore
- Book ID
- 102256898
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2008
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 189 KB
- Volume
- 19
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1044-8004
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The best of business leaders know what it means to experience organizational change. Without fail, it happens every day in businesses across America, in multiple facets and at every level of the organization. But the study of change and the characteristics of becoming a change agent are not useful just for top business leaders. Rather, Dealy and Thomas explore the process of organizational transformation from the inside out, or from the middle levels of an organization. They offer various perspectives of change with practical application and principles based on 25 years of experience in corporate America. The book is intended for business leaders, but because of the common nature of change in any organization, it can also have applicability to many other fields and practices, particularly HRD.
The book is divided into two primary sections. The first three chapters address change from a general perspective. This section explores change as an inevitable process for which any leader must prepare. The authors explore change as an opportunity for personal and professional growth rather than something to be avoided. They suggest that scholarly approaches to change have historically been viewed from one of two perspectives, either psychological or engineer-based. Here, the authors distinguish change management from its two foundations: traditional human resources and organizational development (rooted in psychology), and change-related organizational performance addressing processes, systems, and structure (with origins in engineering). Additionally, the authors outline five great mistakes they believe organizations often make when managing change: (1) underestimating the status quo, (2) favoring consensus over conflict, (3) avoiding risk, rather than managing it, (4) paying only lip service to creativity, and (5) failing to encourage change agents. Each mistake is addressed in the later section of the book where the authors correlate a strategy with each mistake.
Perhaps the most useful section of the early chapters is discussion of the role and characteristics of change agents. They explain that change agents are typically those who either initiate change or adopt it in the early phases of transformation. They are visionaries, innovators, and the creative force behind new endeavors. This role undoubtedly comes laden with great opposition and resistance. Nevertheless, change agents must push forward while continuing