Leaning into the Future: Changing the Way People Change Organizations - Softcover

This volume challenges conventional thinking about "managing" change, the obsession with fads such as "re-engineering", "TQM" and "vision and values" and the flood of change initiatives that engulf many organizations. Drawing on their work with over 100 international companies and public organizations, the authors show how many managers are unwittingly stopping change happening. The harder they try, the less their organizations change - causing exhaustion and frustration. The book examines how, in the authors' experience, organizations really change, how they learn to adapt to changing circumstances and what lessons managers can draw from this. They show how to release the natural energy for change which exists in people's hopes and ambitions, and in the well-known, but often unspoken, issues which frustrate and de-motivate staff and customers. They explore how to take account of the systemic nature of organizations, where actions do not have simple causes and effects, but can have unpredictable, wide-reaching consquences. They aim to show how, by allowing people to use the wisdom they have accumulated through life, managers can enable their organizations to flourish. The book was shortlisted for the MCA and Financial Times/Booz-Allen & Hamilton Prizes.

Based at Ashridge, the authors consult extensively on strategic change. George Binney has worked around the world as a consultant for McKinsey and has been a manager at GEC and Courtaulds. Colin Williams has worked in the hotel industry in Continental Europe and the Middle East for 10 years. He holds an MBA from the City University Business School.