Every year corporations spend billions in pursuit of change. Some are successful. Many are not. Casting a critical eye over the big change efforts of more than 30 organizations worldwide, Paul Taffinder brings together the practical action steps needed for business leaders to develop a strategic and tactical route-map for transforming their firms. The route-map is developed from the S-curve principle popularized by Charles Handy and shows unequivicoally that the time to initiate change is when you are at your most successful. He shows that real transformation demands a escalation of constructive conflict to produce and sustain the kind of radical change essential in organizations in a globalizing world. The executive actions to achieve big change across all sectors of business are constructed through detailed examples, international case studies and action lists. The author?s conclusions are as discomforting as they are insightful, but firmly supported by real world business sense. As one insightful reviewer puts it “Big change often requires taking momentous decisions…and these decisions cannot be enacted incrementally. You cannot leap a chasm in two bounds.”
Book Details:
- Author: Paul Taffinder
- ISBN: 9780470359259
- Year Published: 1999
- Pages: 302
- BISAC: BUS041000, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Management
About the Book and Topic:
Every year corporations spend billions in pursuit of change. Some are successful. Many are not. Casting a critical eye over the big change efforts of more than 30 organizations worldwide, Paul Taffinder brings together the practical action steps needed for business leaders to develop a strategic and tactical route-map for transforming their firms. The route-map is developed from the S-curve principle popularized by Charles Handy and shows unequivicoally that the time to initiate change is when you are at your most successful. He shows that real transformation demands a escalation of constructive conflict to produce and sustain the kind of radical change essential in organizations in a globalizing world. The executive actions to achieve big change across all sectors of business are constructed through detailed examples, international case studies and action lists. The author?s conclusions are as discomforting as they are insightful, but firmly supported by real world business sense. As one insightful reviewer puts it “Big change often requires taking momentous decisions…and these decisions cannot be enacted incrementally. You cannot leap a chasm in two bounds.”
The lessons of Big Change are both startling and profound. If you have ever asked yourself the questions: · how do I kickstart transformation? · how do I clear a path through the corporate mess of projects, initiatives and business-as-usual? · how do I identify market discontinuities and grasp the new business opportunities they offer? · when do I build new organizational values? · how do I re-start change programmes that have stalled? · how do I master change? then this book will give you the answers.
Both startling and profound, this insightful book pulls apart many of the conventional assumptions about corporate change–myths such as building consensus, the need for leadership vision, and the importance of conflict reduction–and outlines the practical action steps needed for business leaders to develop a strategic and tactical route-map for transforming their firms. * Shows that the time to initiate change is when you are at your most successful, and that real transformation demands an escalation of constructive conflict to produce and sustain the radical change essential in a globalizing world. * Delineates the actions executives must take to achieve big change. * Supports recommendations through detailed examples, international case studies, and action lists. * Won the Management Consultancies Association’s (MCA) “Best Business Management Book of the Year” award.
About the Author
Paul Taffinder is an Associate Partner at Andersen Consulting. Formerly a director of Coopers & Lybrand until 1998, he joined Andersen Consulting to concentrate on helping clients with the leadership of complex change. Following a Master’s degree and then PhD in organizational psychology – and what he describes as “a mercifully brief career in the mining industry” – he turned his attention to organizational research and consultancy, becoming passionately interested in the shape of corporations to come and the importance of the socio-psychological driving forces that underlie the world of business. His first book The New Leaders looked specifically at the role of leadership and change, an area in which he has years of in-depth experience consulting internationally. A provocative speaker at international conferences, he is emerging as one of the foremost thinkers on the psychology of organizational change, tenaciously challenging uncritical management orthodoxy, raising the ambition of business leaders, and is now the winner of the prestigious MCA prize. You can e-mail Paul Taffinder at: [email protected] The Wiley web-site address is: www.wiley.co.uk