In this #1 BusinessWeek bestseller, these influential authors reveal their revolutionary prescription for corporate metamorphosis, and outline how organizations can tap new sources of business growth via well-orchestrated, all-encompassing change. Key points are illustrated with anecdotes, case histories and summaries. Francis Gouillart and James Kelly are management director and senior vice president, respectively, at Gemini Consulting, the world's third largest management consulting firm. 15 illustrations.
This book examines how organizations can, and should, transform their practices to compete in a world economy. Research results from a multi-disciplinary team of MIT researchers, along with the experiences and insights of a select group of industry practitioners, are integrated into a model that stresses the need for systemic and transformative rather than piecemeal or incremental changes in organization practices and public policy. This integration of research and experience results in an argument for a new organizational learning model--one capable of gaining advantage from employee diversity, cooperation across organizational boundaries, strategic restructuring, and advanced technology. The book begins with a foreword by Lester C. Thurow.
Achieving true change and innovation depends on our ability to re-imagine and re-author the futures we want our organizations to have – and to open new perspectives and new ways of thinking, being and doing in the process. Narrative approaches and storytelling are powerful tools that can help us create a new future for branding and marketing, change, leadership, organizational learning and development. Gathering contributions by scholars and practitioners from various disciplines, this book provides a unique overview of an emerging field of practice in organizations and communities. Rooted in a narrative conceptual framework, the respective papers describe a broad range of trans-disciplinary applications, tools and methods for effectively working with stories.
It is estimated that approximately seventy percent of organizations fail in their attempts to implement transformative change. This book will help lessen that rate. Using real-world examples, Bruce J. Avolio maps four states of change that any organization must go through: identifying and recognizing, initiating, emerging and impending, and institutionalizing new ways of operating. Each state is described in detail, as are the leadership qualities necessary to solidify and transition from one to the next. These "in-between moments" are an often-overlooked key to organizational transformation. So too is the fact that organizational change happens one individual at a time. For transformation to take root, each person must shift his or her sense of self at work and the role that he or she plays in the transforming organization. Intended as a road map, rather than a "how-to" manual with fixed procedures, Organizational Transformation will help leaders to locate their organization's position on a continuum of progress and confidently navigate planned, whole-systems change, overcoming the challenges of growing from and adjusting to watershed moments.
A clear-eyed look at how AI can complement (rather than eliminate) human jobs, with real-world examples from companies that range from Netflix to Walmart. Descriptions of AI's possible effects on businesses and their employees cycle between utopian hype and alarmist doomsaying. This book from MIT Sloan Management Review avoids both these extremes, providing instead a clear-eyed look at how AI can complement (rather than eliminate) human jobs, with real-world examples from companies that range from Netflix to Walmart. The contributors show that organizations can create business value with AI by cooperating with it rather than relinquishing control to it. The smartest companies know that they don't need AI that mimics humans because they already have access to resources with human capability—actual humans. The book acknowledges the prominent role of such leading technology companies as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google in applying AI to their businesses, but it goes beyond the FAANG cohort to look at AI applications in many nontechnology companies, including DHL and Fidelity. The chapters address such topics as retraining workers (who may be more ready for change than their companies are); the importance of motivated and knowledgeable leaders; the danger that AI will entrench less-than-ideal legacy processes; ways that AI could promote gender equality and diversity; AI and the global loneliness epidemic; and the benefits of robot–human collaboration. Contributors Cynthia M. Beath, Megan Beck, Joe Biron, Erik Brynjolfsson, Jacques Bughin, Rumman Chowdhury, Paul R. Daugherty, Thomas H. Davenport, Chris DeBrusk, Berkeley J. Dietvorst, Janet Foutty, James R. Freeland, R. Edward Freeman, Julian Friedland, Lynda Gratton, Francis Hintermann, Vivek Katyal, David Kiron, Frieda Klotz, Jonathan Lang, Barry Libert, Paul Michelman, Daniel Rock, Sam Ransbotham, Jeanne W. Ross, Eva Sage-Gavin, Chad Syverson, Monideepa Tarafdar, Gregory Unruh, Madhu Vazirani, H. James Wilson
From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented merger and acquisition activity to scandal, greed, and, ultimately, recession -- we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. By outlining the process organizations have used to achieve transformational goals and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work.
The pressure on CEOs and other leaders to create results, while balancing an increasing diversity of opposing demands, is reaching oppressive levels. Leaders sense a breakdown to our existing approaches to business. The framework that was used to guide their efforts and create successful outcomes no longer produce the same results. The Living Organization® delivers a new model that transforms the best of what worked before and expands it to deliver new life and growth for organizations. First and foremost, The Living Organization deepens our understanding of how any living organization creates the results it desires. Norman Wolfe draws on decades of experience both leading and consulting with organizations, large and small, to unravel the mystery of creating results Based on scientific, philosophical and spiritual truths, The Living Organization model explores how three distinct yet highly interdependent fields of energy influence and determine what results will and will not be created. Beyond just a new theory, Norman Wolfe provides practical tools for aligning and focusing the organization on strategy execution. Building on decades of learning about organization effectiveness and execution management, The Living Organization expands our frameworks for allocating resources and making decisions that will reap the desired results. Most organizations fail because they focus only on activities and reduce organizations to simple machines of production. But machines are, by their very nature, soulless and everything the machine paradigm touches turns soulless and lifeless. By contrast, The Living Organization brings life to an organization's activity. It is energized by relationships and brings meaning and purpose to activities. The Living Organization is a creative force and is in harmony with its environment,growing and developing as it contributes to and enhances all members of its ecosystem. "Like all living systems, organizations create by transforming energy. The magic of companies like Apple, Whole Foods, Harley Davidson, Nordstrom," Wolfe writes,"lies in their ability to harness the three energy fields of manifestation whether done consciously or unconsciously." The Living Organization presents the foundation of a new business model that provides a more detailed map to navigate the complex business world of this century. This evolutionary perspective is afresh way to understand how organizations develop, grow and evolve. It will challenge the way you think and interact. The guiding principles and theories can direct the largest of corporations or the entrepreneurial startup in getting the results they want. Deeply personal, brimming with compelling stories from real-life challenges, and packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike. Or anyone interested in creating the results they desire.
In a recent survey of Fortune 500 companies by Price Waterhouse, nearly 80 percent indicated that they are undergoing some kind of large-scale change. Based on the Price Waterhouse Change Integration Team's experiences with hundreds of clients, Better Change involves managers in the real texture and "feel" of change projects.
In this business bestseller, how companies can adapt in an era of continuous disruption: a guide to responding to such acute crises as COVID-19. Gold Medalist in Business Disruption/Reinvention. When COVID-19 hit, businesses had to respond almost instantaneously--shifting employees to remote work, repairing broken supply chains, keeping pace with dramatically fluctuating customer demand. They were forced to adapt to a confluence of multiple disruptions inextricably linked to a longer-term, ongoing digital disruption. This book shows that companies that use disruption as an opportunity for innovation emerge from it stronger. Companies that merely attempt to "weather the storm" until things go back to normal (or the next normal), on the other hand, miss an opportunity to thrive. The authors, all experts on business and technology strategy, show that transformation is not a one-and-done event, but a continuous process of adapting to a volatile and uncertain environment. Drawing on five years of research into digital disruption--including a series of interviews with business leaders conducted during the COVID-19 crisis--they offer a framework for understanding disruption and tools for navigating it. They outline the leadership traits, business principles, technological infrastructure, and organizational building blocks essential for adapting to disruption, with examples from real-world organizations. Technology, they remind readers, is not an end in itself, but enables the capabilities essential for surviving an uncertain future: nimbleness, scalability, stability, and optionality.
