Change Is the Rule: Practical Actions for Change: On Target, on Time, on Budget - Hardcover

Holland, Winford E., Ph.D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0793136121 ISBN 13: 9780793136124

Publisher: Dearborn Trade Pub, 2000

Synopsis

Consider the metaphor of a theater. One play is in performance, even as the company prepares for a new play simultaneously. Leaders who can focus, like the director of a play, on tangible, concrete features of their organizations, can make change happenon target, on time, on budget. Solutions to problems emerge from practical actions taken to revise and communicate the vision, and modify plant, equipment, tools, processes, worker agreements, and products or services. Developing detailed daily or weekly action plans puts effective changes into motion, as change expertise becomes as second nature as running the business.

About this title

About the Author

Lessons from Change-Master Winford E. Dutch Holland, Ph.D.

Consultant, trainer and speaker, Dutch Holland has taught hundreds of leaders and teams how to transform their organizations in his 30 years as leader, chairman and CEO of the Texas-based consulting firm Holland & Davis. He has spearheaded change with such organizations as The Houston Space Center, Eli Lilly, Shell Oil as well as with companies in crisis. His work inside Union Carbide after the Bhopal tragedy and inside NASA after the Challenger disaster was instrumental in helping each organization cope with the crisis, then incorporate the lessons in order to move on as a stronger entity.

He shares with clarity and insight the steps needed to turn change mastery into the second nature required for businesses to succeed in this climate of relentless change. Leaders, managers, and employees alike will find his message promoting detailed action plans a welcome relief from the typical flavor of the month change programs that are typically long on theory and short on practical results.

From the Inside Flap

If you want to eat this month, you gotta learn how to run the business. If you want to eat this time next year, you gotta' learn how to change the business.

It is with this straightforward approach that author Winford E. Dutch Holland offers a practical guide to mastering organizational change. Hollands clear-cut, step-by-step methods are refreshing among the many esoteric and theoretical treatises on the subject of change.

Change Is the Rule is built upon several ideas to make the following key points:

- Organizational change is now the rule and no longer the exception - Change does not happen in a vacuumall managers must become as adept at managing change as they are at running the day-to-day business - An organization is first and foremost a mechanical systemnot a social systemand change occurs when the four mechanical attributes of an organization are altered: Vision, Work Processes, Plant/Equipment/Tools, and Performance Management Systems - An organization is analogous to a theater company, and managers have mastered change in their organization when they can make changes as easily and efficiently as theater companies change from one play to another - Individual employees must master the change process as easily and professionally as an actor does when moving from a great performance in one play to another

Hollands use of a theater metaphor to describe organizational change, labeled throughout the book as Mind-Clearing Examples, provides logical insights into the right and wrong ideas on organizational change. As a manager, you will quickly learn that the day-to-day tools already within your competency are the key tools needed for successful changeif used in the framework Holland uses throughout the book.

With Change Is the Rule you will have a roadmap for change that you can confidently follow. You will see organizational change as a creative act of leadership that can be doneon target, on time, on budget.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Way We Are Changing Organizations Is Not Working

The prevailing standard in running a business today is on target, on time, and on budget. Buyers expect to get what they paid for, on time, and at the price agreed to in advance. Given those buyer expectations, companies have adjusted their ways of operating in order to make this new standard a reality.

Unfortunately, there is a totally different standard in place for changing an organization: off target, very late, and way over budget. Anybody who has been a part of changing organizations has experienced changes that didnt turn out the way they were planned or that did not produce the results that were desired. They likely experienced delays of weeks, months, and even years, and cost overruns of everything from a few percentage points to orders of magnitude. Some have even experienced abandonment of organizational changes in midstream with nothing to show for it except frustration and depleted bank accounts!

A popular observation is that 70 percent of the reengineering projects that companies use to change themselves and the way they do business do not achieve the desired results. When many organization members who have gone through change look back on it and label it as nightmarish, destabilizing, chaotic, and life changing, we know that something is ineffective! Its time to question the way we go about changing organizations.

Are all companies having trouble changing? For companies who have not had to change very often, the occasional change is especially difficult, but they usually muddle through. For companies more experienced with organizational change, the change process goes better. But even the companies who do change best cannot do it as well as they can run their daily businesses. Of those companies best at change, few would be willing to adopt a change standard of on target, on time, and on budget. And therein lies the problem; companies are not changing well enough to avoid negative consequences, much less use change as a competitive weapon. The Case for Improving the Way We Change Organizations

Todays business world is dramatically different from the one we knew just a few short years ago. Greatly increased rivalry from global competitors, more demanding customers, every-rising stockholder expectations, and accelerating technology all contribute to a business world that is different today and changing for tomorrow. Change is no longer the exception; it is now the rule!

When change was the exception, firms could win in their industries by being the best at running their day-to-day businessescranking out the products and services that had been winners in the market place for some time. Winning in this kind of environment was based on slowly climbing the learning curve and gradually refining work processes. Winning in this environment was very much like an automobile race run on an infinite straightwaythe winner would be the car that had the highest top speed and endurance.

Competing successfully in a world where change is the rule and not the exception requires a new standard. When change becomes the rule, firms can no longer win by being the best at running their business in an unvarying way. Now the basis for winning is how well firms can change the ways they run their businesses. The firms that win in this new business environment are those who can get new products and services into play on target, on time, and on budget. Firms that win are able to retool employee mindsets and skills on target, on time, and on budget. Winning in this environment is very much like the automobile race run on a grand prix circuitthe winner will be the car that can get to high speed on the straights and be extremely fast through the curves.

Todays business world has raised the bar. Firms must now be able to run and change their businesses with equal proficiency. But why cant businesses already do that? Why is changing an organization so different from running one that is not changing? First, it is more difficult to change a business because you also have to keep running it! Organizations are not allowed to shut themselves down, stop serving customers, and stop paying stockholders while the company works through the change. Companies literally have to do two things at onceand that makes it difficult, time consuming, and energy depleting.

Second, companies do not know how to change with the same degree of precision in which they run their businesses. Adding to the difficulty that many companies face what can only be charitably described as ineffective and incomplete ideas about organizational change.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dearborn Trade Pub
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0793136121
• ISBN 13: 9780793136124
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 245