Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change - Hardcover

Satell, Greg

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1260454010 ISBN 13: 9781260454017

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2019

Synopsis

What does it take to change the world? This book will show you how to harness the power of CASCADES to create a revolutionary movement!

If you could make a change—any change you wanted—what would it be?  Would it be something in your organization or your industry? Maybe something it’s in your community or throughout society as a whole? 

Creating true change is never easy. Most startups don’t survive. Most community groups never get beyond small local actions. Even when a spark catches fire and protesters swarm the streets, it often seems to fizzle out almost as fast as it started. The status quo is, almost by definition, well entrenched and never gives up without a fight.

In this groundbreaking book, one of today's top innovation experts delivers a guide for driving transformational change. To truly change the world or even just your little corner of it, you don’t need a charismatic leader or a catchy slogan. What you need is a cascade: small groups that are loosely connected but united by a common purpose. 

As individual entities, these groups may seem inconsequential, but when they synchronize their collective behavior as networks, they become immensely powerful. Through the power of cascades, a company can be made anew, an industry disrupted, or even an entire society reshaped. As Satell takes us through past and present movements, he explains exactly why and how some succeed while others fail. 

About this title

About the Author

Greg Satell is a writer, speaker, innovation adviser, and one of today's most recognized experts on transformational change. As co-CEO of KP Media, a $100 million enterprise, he managed a portfolio of Ukrainian media brands, including the Kyiv Post and Korrespondent, two news organizations that played pivotal roles in the Orange Revolution.

From the Back Cover

"In Cascades, Greg Satell delivers an essential guide to navigating and driving change in today's disruptive environment. I wish he had written it years ago. It would have reinforced our need to not only to have the right strategy but to manage the entrenched forces working against it.”

John Antioco, former CEO of Blockbuster Video and Chairman of RED Mango 

 

“Greg Satell’s Cascades is among the most useful, engaging, and well-crafted books ever written on how to start and sustain large-scale change. Satell does a masterful job of weaving cases, stories, and evidence to illustrate the nuances of his simple formula--small groups, loosely connected, but united by a common purpose—and to show when and how leaders can use these elements to spread ideas and change organizations for the better.”

Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor and bestselling author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and Scaling Up Excellence

 

One of the great puzzles of history is how enduring business, political, and social orders can crumble without warning, seemingly overnight. In Cascades. bestselling author Greg Satell lucidly combines insights from network science, historical case studies, and his own experience living through Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, to deliver a thought provoking account of this profound phenomenon. Cascades is essential reading for policy makers, business leaders and social activists alike.

 Duncan J. Watts, author of Six Degrees

 

“Greg Satell really understands movements—how they arise and what makes them succeed or fail. What makes him unique is his ability to show how the principles apply beyond the political sphere to organizations, industries, and society as a whole.”

 Srdja Popović, Executive Director of Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), Co-Founder of Otpor!, and author of Blueprint for Revolution 

 

“The complex nature of modern day counterterrorism taught us that defeating threat networks requires a hybrid structure of network and hierarchy. In Cascades, Satell walks us through the impacts that networks are having in other spaces, and shows us that it is often small groups with the ability to interoperate with other small groups that are the key to driving change. For those hoping to deepen their understanding of the current state of play, Cascades is a must read!" 

 Chris Fussell, President of McChrystal Group and bestselling author of One Mission and Team of Teams (with General Stanley McChrystal) 

 

“In Cascades, you will learn how to create a successful movement, while avoiding pitfalls along the way. Throughout the book, Greg makes the case that the principles of great movements throughout history can empower you to create change in your own life, community, and company.”

Dan Schawbel, bestselling author of Back to Human, Promote Yourself, and Me 2.0

 

"Creating change today requires more than a strategy, but a deep understanding of how information flows through networks and ecosystems to affect behavior. Greg Satell has a real talent for explaining the science behind networks and how it affects events in the real world in a way that is fun, engaging, and powerful."

AnnaLee Saxenian, Dean and Professor at UC Berkeley School of Information and author of Regional Advantage and The New Argonauts

 

 "I wish I had this book when we started our movement to improve STEM education in America! Cascades promises to be an essential guide for anyone who wants to create meaningful change in the world.”

 Talia Milgrom-Elcott, Executive Director and Co-Founder of 100Kin10

 

“Cascades provides a powerful blueprint for corporate change that leverages lessons learned from social movements around the world and throughout history. This book will forever change your perception of change and how to make it happen.” 

Stephen Shapiro, Author of Best Practices are Stupid

 

"Ready to reboot your company culture? Create something new? Leaders in organizations large and small will find an important blueprint for how to fail at starting a movement and how to inspire the kind of change that makes history in Greg Satell's Cascades. A must read for all innovators and daring organizers."

Lu Ann Cahn, 8-time Emmy award winner and author of I Dare Me

 

“The test of an excellent book on a leadership topic is its ability to give profound insight on daily situations that help leaders to do their jobs better. I had many “aha!” moments reading this book but my favourite idea is the notion of “keystone changes” (in Chapter 4). What a genius concept! I have tried this idea out with several work teams and all of them have moved forward in their thinking and practice as a result. We are joining the ranks of Gandhi and the salt march, votes for women, and the same-sex marriage movement in finding a common cause that a diverse group of people can unite behind. The difference between tactics that work for social movements and tactics for contemporary organisations is actually not that great.”

Helen Bevan, Chief Transformation Officer at NHS Horizons (National Health Service of England)

 

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1260454010
• ISBN 13: 9781260454017
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288