Overview

An indispensable source for anyone who needs to implement business decisions on time and within budget. In today's ever-fluctuating world, it's not enough to recognize that you and the way you do business need to change. You must know how to make changes quickly, effectively and economically or you are bound to fail. Conner has taken his twenty years of change management experience and written a ground-breaking guide on resilient, successful change. His system focuses on how to change rather than what to change. Business people at all levels now face the major challenge of initiating company-wide reorganization plans, responding quickly to competition, establishing new products and markets, and adapting themselves smoothly to fluctuations in the economy.

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9780471974949

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Reviews

Through the author's creative and strategic use of storytelling, Managing at the Speed of Change paints a compelling picture: The biggest, most expensive thing that can derail success is resistance to change in all its forms, from arrogance and complacency to fear or ignorance. As an authority on change management, Conner writes a wonderful prescription, providing relief not just in the race for business but on a personal level, too. -Bob Nardelli, chairman, president, and CEO, The Home Depot While many of the concepts in this book's first publication have now become classic, they are every bit as relevant and impactful, especially to an organization for whom change is an imperative. -Howard Pien, chairman and CEO, Chiron Corporation Managing at the Speed of Change provides essential working knowledge for anyone leading or implementing major change. I have been using this material since it was first published, and it is as valuable today as it was then. Daryl Conner's insights are timeless and enduring. -Valerie Norton, executive director, organizational development, Merck and Company, Inc. It is refreshing to finally read a book that contains simple, clear, actionable concepts and ideas that deal with change management and can be used by all levels of management who face today's staggering business realities. I found Mr. Conner's book to be educational, thought-provoking, insightful, and stimulating. He recognizes 'the need for speed.' -Lloyd H. Dean, president and CEO, Catholic Healthcare West

Change doctor and corporate-crisis intervener Conner explains why some managers instinctively thrive on change while others founder and fail, and how the latter can learn to be more like the former. The baseline pattern for successful management of an increasing pace of corporate change (amounting to continual future shock, says Conner) is resilience - which the author defines as consisting of an optimistic rather than fearful outlook; clear goals; the ability to draw on all of one's inner and outer resources; efficiency in allocating and/or conserving those resources; and foresight in place of hindsight. But one or more combinations of seven additional support patterns may (and probably will) kick in. Tangled webs of positive and negative emotional, cultural, and organizational tendencies, these affect everyone from technical assistants to the corporate chieftain and include the nature of change itself, which causes employees to accelerate their desire for control; the process of change, which a successful manager must insure does not exact a greater price than the price of not changing; the fixed organizational roles of change, which include sponsors, agents, and targets, and which must be consciously and carefully assigned; a natural resistance to change, which must be transformed from denial to acceptance and from informed pessimism to implementation; the commitment to change, which requires fostering; the variable of corporate culture, which dictates how management presents and orchestrates change; and synergy, or the capacity for teamwork. Conner's purpose is to take the mystery out of change, which he does with such additional tips as how to increase one's store of change assimilation points, and how to teach resilience to employees. A schematic diagram that will prove both useful and reassuring but that fails to address the layperson's most basic question about change: Why must it happen at all? (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

DARYL CONNER has, in the last twenty-three years, been a consultant, psychologist, researcher and executive. He and his consulting firm (ODR, Inc.) have been written about in such publications as the New York Times and Business Week. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia. ODR, Inc. has served as ""change doctor"" for clients such as Georgia Pacific, Honeywell, IBM, Levi Strauss, Mobil Oil, AT&T, Chase Manhattan, JC Penney, Pepsi-Cola Company, and numerous organizations and governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia, South Africa, and the former Soviet Union.

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