Synopsis
Provides a step-by-step road map for major organizational change, combining conceptual frameworks, agendas, techniques, tools, and roles that key individuals need to play
Reviews
Business consultant Jacobs promotes here a strategy that involves both managers and employees in planning and incorporating change throughout companies on a regular basis. He stresses that "real time strategic change," which "involves an entire organization in fundamental, far-reaching and fast-paced change," unleashes "extraordinary energy and optimism" among employees by focusing their attention on mastering change and achieving business goals, a process Jacobs contends rarely happens in American companies. He argues that democratic procedures allow employees to develop loyalty to organizations "they want to call their own." Jacobs's organizational theories make good sense. Illustrated. Executive Program Book Club selection.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Jacobs has drawn from his extensive consulting experiences to produce this practical book about how to move quickly through an entire organizational change. It advocates a fundamental redesign of organizational change, well beyond the standard "participative management," which was popularized a couple of decades ago. Combining conceptual frameworks, agendas, techniques, tools, and roles that key individuals need to play, this text provides a clear, direct, step-by-step road map through the entire major change process. The 14 chapters, grouped into four parts, use illustrative examples to explain how to achieve broad involvement with interactive large groups in a timely manner. This hands-on guidebook is recommended to a wide audience, including not only organizational leaders, members, and consultants but also experts and facilitators concerned with organizational strategy, culture, redesign, total quality management, reengineering, or continuous improvement. Joseph Leonard
In business, dynamic change is the name of the game. Jacobs, a "change" consultant, has written a primer for positively effecting organizational change, a process that, without the real-time process, more often than not results in failure. Jacobs posits that success is achieved by involving everyone at once in the process. The immersion process he champions, while used successfully in noncommercial applications, is an innovative practice in the business world. A number of organizations (Ford, Corning, Boeing, etc.) that have employed the techniques are used as examples. While generally well written, this book has a few flaws. Chapters 4, 5, and 6, which align process, people, and principles, could benefit from the graphic presentations found in the other chapters. Jacobs's distinction between "real time" and "strategic change" is beyond all but scholastic philosophers. For academic collections.
Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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