Champions of Change

"The reality of change in the organizational trenches defies rigid academic models as well as superficial management fads."

"Each organization is a complex social system, comprising a specific set of four tightly interrelated components."

"What causes the demand for change in the current competitive environment, what challenges does it create for organizations, and what are its implications for developing competitive strength?"

"How do you stay perpetually focused on tomorrow while not losing sight of what you have to get done today?"

"There are two broad ways to categorize large-scale change. The first is on the basis of scope, or the breadth of change. The second is on the basis of the timing of the industry change cycles."

"Discontinuous change, because it shatters the framework of the existing organization and scrambles the internal patterns of informal relationships, presents its own very special set of issues for leaders of change."

"Given our fluid and competitive environment and the enormous threats external forces pose to every organization, the prospect of discontinuous change presents leaders with three basic challenges."

"The result of uncertainty and instability is stress, both for the leaders of change and those they're trying to lead."

"It's up to managers to seize the initiative and move aggressively to win support for change."

"In an era of constant change, leaders have to work at remaining constantly tuned in to environmental shifts in order to dodge threats and capitalize on opportunities."

"The integrated change agenda is an umbrella; under it comes all the elements of the change effort."

"The greatest value is in the planning, not the plan."

"Redesign is so seductively easy that organizations tend to overdo it, to seize upon restructuring as a quick and dirty solution to more complex problems."

"In the context of a given strategy, what organizational structure will best channel the right information to the right people in the right sequence?"

"The real danger is that the change effort could simply run out of gas. Momentum could evaporate. And in the long run that can prove just as deadly as slipping back to the prechange state of affairs."

"These leaders become the psychological focal point for many of their employees; in an almost mystical way they become the personal embodiment of the institution, its values, its beliefs, and its future."

"Effective managers look for ways to fully engage their people in shaping their own environment within the framework of the overall change agenda."

"Managers can't hope to direct, encourage, and sustain their people unless they've personally undergone an individual transformation by learning, understanding, and internalizing what the change is all about."

"The principle of valid information works both ways?it means not only collecting enough useful information but also disseminating that information thoroughly and often in unusual ways. "