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 | | Built to Change: How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness by Edward E. Lawler III, Chris Worley, Jerry Porras (Foreword) ISBN-10: 9780787980610 ISBN-10: 0-7879-8061-7 ISBN-13: 9780787980610 ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8061-0 Hardcover 2006-02-17 Jossey-Bass Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description In this groundbreaking book, organizational effectiveness experts Edward Lawler and Christopher Worley show how organizations can be “built to change” so they can last and succeed in today’s global economy. Instead of striving to create a highly reliable Swiss watch that consistently produces the same behavior, they argue organizations need to be designed in ways that stimulate and facilitate change. Built to Change focuses on identifying practices and designs that organizations can adopt so that they are able to change. As Lawler and Worley point out, organizations that foster continuous change
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Reviews | ||
A Primer of Change Concepts In this easy to read compilation of business concepts to deal with constantly changing external environmental factors driven by the global economy, academics Lawler and Worley introduce their `B2Change' Model. Using the term identity, to describe an organization's core values, behaviors, and beliefs; the authors use several Fortune 500 examples to argue that continuously Strategizing, Designing, and Creating Value around the organization's identity are the primary contributors to organizational effectiveness. It is hard to argue with these descriptors of widely acknowledged, critical, organizational drivers. The book follows the discussion of the B2Change Model with an overview of various structural options, information requirements and decision making processes, people management, and leadership thoughts before closing with a chapter on the features of a Built-to-Change Organization. During these discussions they promote; leadership teams as being more useful than a single hero-leader, team evaluations over individual performance appraisals, rewards that motivate performance, and a shift away from the job to the individual as the building block for an organization's design (the Me Inc. concept). All these and the many other ideas for adapting to change are often given life thru the use of business examples. The book is recommended for students of organizational change looking for an overview of management concepts that support change. | ||
Change the way we change Brilliant! the book introduce a new approach to change. Out of the box thinking, to the point, and very insightful. Sharp writers that make a different in the way we think and operate. | ||
Very Good Book!!! This is a very good book. For those interested in creating an organization that is designed to view change as "normal" business--this book is excellent reading. I teach organizational leadership--I have added this to the required reading list in a change management/research course. | ||
Clear roadmap for the future: how to change continuously This is a bold, fascinating and occasionally dangerous book, which we recommend to those who want to plan carefully and honestly for the future. Why "carefully" and "honestly?" Because authors Edward E. Lawler III and Christopher G. Worley are savvy enough to identify the kind of organization best suited for a business environment shaped by continuous change - and bold enough to prescribe the actions leaders must take to survive in this environment. These actions require care and honesty because they differ so fundamentally from many past business practices. For example, the idea of continually re-planning your market position sounds straightforward. However, to then eliminate all employees who have done great work, but whose skill base does not match the firm's new portfolio, is risky and requires great faith in your vision. As the authors repeatedly note, the future is difficult to predict, and impossible to predict completely. What's more, for individual managers to examine their organizations, see that they no longer fit and voluntarily step aside will require rigorous honesty and responsibility. They would need to have planned their careers and finances well enough that self-interest does not blind them. Many of this book's ideas have a similar nature. They seem good and right, but applying them successfully will require great discipline. | ||
Organizations that cannot change cannot survive, much less prosper. Obviously, if organizations are not "built to change," they cannot effectively respond to inevitable changes in their competitive marketplace. Moreover, they may be able to achieve some temporary success but cannot sustain it over a period of time. In the Foreword, Jerry Porras briefly but brilliantly explores two themes: "First, leaders must understand their organization's values, and work to shape them in such a way that those values guide and sustain needed changes rather than undermine them. Second, leaders must architect their organizations to embrace rather than resist change." Co-authors Lawler and Worley see this volume as a sequel to Jim Collins' Built to Last because, in it, they explain "what organizations need to do once they have developed the foundation for survival and want to increase their effectiveness over time." This seems to be the same objective which Collins set for himself in his own sequel, Good to Great. What they call the "B2Change Model" consists of Environmental Scenarios (which describe a range of possible future business conditions an identifies "preferred futures") and three primary organizational processes which contribute to organizational effectiveness. Strategizing (a process by which to establish priorities so that by having a "strategic intent"). Only after concluding this process can an organization then initiate the other two processes, Creating Value through competencies and capabilities, and, Designing the structures and other processes that enable an organization to achieve sustained effectiveness enterprise-wide. Step by step, with both rigor and eloquence, Lawler and Worley explain how any organization (regardless of size or nature) can do this, guided and informed by the B2Change Model. In the final chapter, they make several key points. First, that making the transition to a B2Change organization is much more difficult than operating one. Also, that each of the three processes is more changeable and more flexible than the prior one. However, the designing process is the key to developing the competencies and capabilities that are needed to implement a strategic intent. They identify five key initiatives on the road to becoming B2Change and then discuss them in the order in which they recommend implementation. (They are listed on page 287.) They also explain how certain key elements can support an organization's focus on its external environment so that everyone involved understands change as a natural process. "Creating a change-friendly identity is a fundamental step in becoming a b2change organization." Still another key point involves what Lawler and Worley see as the final initiative: bringing all of the prior processes together in a virtuous spiral. "Virtuous spirals - periods in the life of an organization - are characterized by critical configuration, proximity, and dynamic alignment. They are built and sustained by a series of temporary competitive advantages." I am reminded of what Peter Drucker observed in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." That is precisely why Lawler and Worley place such great emphasis on the first process of the B2Change Model, Strategizing. It is absolutely imperative that proper organizational priorities and an organization's strategic intend be established first. Otherwise, completion of the second and third processes may well be flawless but ultimately worthless. | ||