Mary Lynn
Manns, University of North Carolina at Asheville
manns@unca.edu
linda@lindarising.org
Have you ever tried to introduce a new idea into your
organization?
We have gathered proven strategies for leading a change initiative. To do this, we heard numerous experiences from people leading change in a variety of sizes and types of organizations throughout the world. While doing this, we documented our observations, read publications on the topics of change and influence, studied how change agents throughout history have tackled the problems they faced, and exposed our work for comment and feedback.
Change is hard. Leaders will struggle and so will the people they are trying to convince. But the stories of success we have heard show that there is hope. You need three things to introduce your idea: your belief in it, the determination to act on your belief, and some information on how to bring the idea into your organization. You supply the first two; the patterns in Fearless Change provide the third.
The book is available from:
Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company
amazon.com
The book includes a
complete version of the patterns, a framework for using them, and
experience reports that describe how the patterns can help you
introduce new ideas into your organization!
Best Book of the Year for 2004 in the Journal of Object
Technology
Books
that changed my career. 12 books to read this year.
Average customer review on amazon.com
is 4.5 (out of 5) stars!
Review
from Michael Feathers
IBM Rational
Edge
Michael
Nilsson's babel says: Thank you Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising
for your book
informit.com
Michael Swaine discusses Fearless Change in Dr. Dobbs Journal, February 2005
George
Dinwiddie's blog
Don
Gray's blog
Director, Strategic Program Office, The Dannon
Company
Review
by Ilja Preuss
Eric Valdes, student of Mary Lynn Manns
Review by Mark Needmam
Markus Gaertner, Group Leader Testing & Automation, Orga Systems GmbH,
Paderborn, Germany writes:
Review by
Tom Duff
More information can be found at:
Manns and Rising describe fundamental methods that can be used to
introduce change into an organization without sending it into a collective
funk.
Since this is the first step in the solution of most problems, I
give this book the nod as the best book of the year.
David Bock says: "Instant classic. Here is how you can be a mover and
shaker in your workplace."
Extremely well written guide to the people side of the business. The first
thing a consultant learns is that our work isn't technical, it's people
work. Sure, we teach technical things and solve technical problems, but
unless we help people change, the technical knowledge falls on the floor
and lies there. This book is written for people who are charged with
changing their organizations. It contains a lot of distilled wisdom.
Book Excerpt
sample chapter
The book freely acknowledges that people are not rational, that we use
facts to justify emotionally-arrived-at decisions. It then presents
techniques for getting things done anyway, despite this fundamental
irrationality, by the use of proven patterns.
... a wonderfully helpful book
My thoughts about the book ... If you don't have the book, get it. If
you have the book and haven't read it, do so now. This books takes
information you may already know at some level, and provides a standard
framework for the 48 patterns. The authors present the patterns in a
"scenario sequence", but encourage you to add the patterns to your change
agent repertoire and use what fits at the opportune time.
We are continuing to use your "Fearless Patterns of Change" as part of
how
we introduce change within the organization and are finding it very
helpful in recognizing what actions we should take depending on the
situation and person. We would like to further introduce these patterns
into the organization so that everyone begins to speak the same language
when introducing change.
One of the approaches that we are thinking of is to teach "Fearless
Patterns of Change" as part of our internal Project Management course that
we teach to our employees.
The whole book is quite entertaining to read, every chapter being to
the
point and at the same time filled with clever quotations and examples from
the trenches. On each page you sense it's not only the experience of the
two authors that is to your disposal, but also that of dozens of people
they talked with during the years. If you want to have an impact on how
things are done at your workplace, you should put this book at the top of
your reading list.
I was able to finish your book last night on the plane and
I absolutely loved it! You and Linda give great insight and advice in how
to really adopt change into an organization and gain the cooperation
necessary from your fellow workers. I will keep this with me forever and remember many of the things you say
as they are things that will really help me now and later on down the
road. I could only wish that more organizations would buy this book and
try to learn its core principles.
How to introduce ideas when people just want to get things done? How to
balance pragmatism with improvement? Beyond persuasion, what can we do to
change things?
...especially
useful if you are working in an
environment where you want to make significant changes - it provides a lot
of information around the best ways to do so.
Currently I am reading through your wonderful book "Fearless Change"
and regret that I haven't taken the time to read it earlier.
If you want to be more effective in getting people to
follow you when
things change (or need to), reading this book will get you there.
Book Appendix
These files are formatted for easy printing on index cards:
Our newest
patterns (not published yet)
Thanks to Don Gray!
A Few Papers
Some (of the many) Presentations We Do
written by Gustaf Brandberg, the CEO of
Citerus (Sweden)