Parachuting Cats Into Borneo: And Other Lessons from the Change Caf?

A toolkit of proven strategies and practices for building capacity and creating transformation

Recent years have seen a proliferation of information on how to make change―in business, in social and environmental movements, and on a more personal scale. But, even with all this attention, two out of three change efforts fail to achieve their desired result. How can you make your own effort buck this trend?

In Parachuting Cats into Borneo, change-management experts Axel Klimek and Alan AtKisson offer crisp, concise, and targeted advice for success. They expose the most significant impediments―helping readers recognize their habitual patterns of thinking and perceiving a situation, critique their own beliefs regarding change, and then move beyond these unhelpful patterns using improved systems thinking.

Named after a classic tale of unintended consequences, Parachuting Cats into Borneo delivers tools that help leaders and others keep their change initiatives on track. The advice imparted will help you move away from agonizing over immediate problems toward stoking action, identifying collaborators, focusing at the right level for your cause, and aiding others in pursuing their change.

Klimek and AtKisson draw from their decades of helping corporations, networks, governments, and NGOs reach their change goals to demonstrate how to use system-based change tools to their maximum advantage.

A closing section is devoted to change making in the realm of sustainability, where complexity abounds but the right tools, used well, can help us tackle some of the most significant challenges of our time.

Axel Klimek is the cofounder and managing director of the Center for Sustainability Transformation. He has worked in more than twenty-five countries on four continents, and within a wide spectrum of contexts―helping leaders, organizations, and developmental programs manage complex change processes and improve their performance. His clients have included the African Union Commission, Canon Europe, EY, PWC, Allianz, GIZ, Lufthansa, Unilever, and T-Systems. He lives in Germany.

Alan AtKisson, CEO of AtKisson Group and cofounder of the Center for Sustainability Transformation, was inducted into the International Sustainability Hall of Fame in 2013. He has advised governments, cities, and organizations around the world, including Nike, Levi Strauss, Toyota, WWF, and the United Nations Secretariat. His six previous books include the Amazon bestseller Believing Cassandra. He is a dual citizen of the USA and Sweden, and lives in Stockholm.