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Rating: 
Summary: Packed With Knowledge!
Review: Author Jeanie Daniel Duck presents an engaging, personal look at the human emotions, conflicts, fears and anxieties that unite to make change difficult. She describes the five stages of the change process - stagnation, preparation, implementation, determination and, finally, fruition. As she goes in depth about each stage, the author illustrates her explanation with personal examples from her experiences as an organizational consultant. Some of the issues she raises may be familiar to those who have read other books about how to launch change initiatives, but we [...] find that her focus on the human elements of change provides a fresh perspective. The book is directed primarily toward executives, managers or supervisors in charge of leading corporate change, but even if you are already prepared to conquer the change monster, this author's personal touches and stage-by-stage approach will intrigue you.
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Summary: Human Side of Change
Review: Duck clearly delineates the stages of change, illuminates the pitfalls of ignoring the human factor, and provides proven methods of successfully navigating change. A good read, with lots of reasons to use your highlighter. The points on "creating dissatisfaction" are exceptional.
Rating: 
Summary: Good advice but plodding
Review: I disagree with some of the other reviewers who say that the book is a good read. I felt that I didn't know where the book was going a lot of the time. When all was said and done, I was glad to be finished (sometimes I really had to push myself to keep going), but I did learn a lot about change management.
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Summary: Good ideas!
Review: I had to purchase this book for a graduate-level class. Jeanie Duck provides an easy-to-read book, providing a fresh perspective on the emotional aspects of organizational change. She concentrates on mergers and acquisitions, but the information and focus she provides can still be utilized in any change situation.
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Summary: Understanding the Road of Change
Review: In emotionally draining management situations, you as a manager, or you as an employee feels totally lost and alone. You think that this dark cloud over your head is so unique that you don't think there is hope. Nobody will understand how this is done. I think the use of this book, akin to personal self-help book, is to tell you you are not alone. This situation you are going through is normal and you are not going out of your mind. Yes, there might not be concrete steps on how to do things, but in dealing with human beings, nothing is set in stone. That's why it's so hard to manage. That's why we have shrinks. There is no formularic way of "fixing the problem". You will just have to learn from experience, and reading about other people's experiences will help you identify potential red flags.That's what's good about this book. It's loaded with Ms. Duck's personal experience working as a Change Management Consultant for BCG. She presents two real cases (one real and the other one an amalgamation of similar companies), tells us what was going through in the heads of management and employees. She painstakingly details the action that was taken and how it affected the company as a whole. It's a very good book to start your way into the realms of change management.
Rating:
Summary: Comforting
Review: The change monster made me aware of the stages of change in a company: Stagnation,
Preparation, Implementation, and Fruition. Ms Duck seems to be an excellent consultant from the stories I read. The book seems oriented towards Human Resources types as the title suggests. My background is Information Technology consulting, so I found I related too only a few of her stories. I would say her stories were interesting and demonstrated how companies move through change stages arriving at fruition. Ms Duck reminences on her experience and draws important conclusions and abstractions from her experiences. Some of her experiences seemed familar while a larger portion were not as concrete. I could see how large organizations profit from her holositic view of change. I'm sure her wisdom should not dismissed. I've read Jack Welch's books and reflected on the quantifiable and scientific approach to change and can see objective change can appeal rationally; however, Ms Duck seems to have produced change through insight and dramatic effects a vast range of companies and types. She seems to have a gift for perception and insight into the inner dynamics of the people that make change happen in a company. Duck hand holds her clients through change stages and comforts them by imparting wisdom that allows her client to see a "better way". This "better way" seems to have dynamic impacts on the production of the company. Once the barriers are removed the company matures and reaches fruition.
Rating:
Summary: Comforting
Review: The change monster made me aware of the stages of change in a company: Stagnation,
Preparation, Implementation, and Fruition. Ms Duck seems to be an excellent consultant from the stories I read. The book seems oriented towards Human Resources types as the title suggests. My background is Information Technology consulting, so I found I related too only a few of her stories. I would say her stories were interesting and demonstrated how companies move through change stages arriving at fruition. Ms Duck reminences on her experience and draws important conclusions and abstractions from her experiences. Some of her experiences seemed familar while a larger portion were not as concrete. I could see how large organizations profit from her holositic view of change. I'm sure her wisdom should not dismissed. I've read Jack Welch's books and reflected on the quantifiable and scientific approach to change and can see objective change can appeal rationally; however, Ms Duck seems to have produced change through insight and dramatic effects a vast range of companies and types. She seems to have a gift for perception and insight into the inner dynamics of the people that make change happen in a company. Duck hand holds her clients through change stages and comforts them by imparting wisdom that allows her client to see a "better way". This "better way" seems to have dynamic impacts on the production of the company. Once the barriers are removed the company matures and reaches fruition.
Rating:
Summary: The Textbook on Human Emotions
Review: The human nature lies in the very base of any organization. That is why organizations, including business ones, tend to behave like humans. Along their lives they pass through different stages, like stagnation, understanding the necessity of change, the transformation and either back to the stagnation or upward to the new level of consciousness or efficiency. However, very few books on the market consider the transformation process from the "human" point of view. That is from the prospective of human emotions. Ms. Duck is to be sincerely thanked for the attempt to close the gap. The book shows that the emotions do really matter in the process of changes, and can easily abrupt the transformation, as well as make it successful. Interestingly, many consultants yet fail to recognize this obvious fact and prefer to deal with charts rather then with people and their complicated behavior. The author points out that the process of changes is somewhat constant to any business structure in the modern world - another conventional truth, which is often forgotten by CEOs and business leaders. Meanwhile, the book fails to show how particular managing techniques help to resolve emotional problems on each stage of transformation. The examples from "real life" are somewhat chaotic and case studies are not well organized around the central idea (if there is any?). It is not clear what is the point of each particular story, including the glimpses of the author's biography in the beginning of some chapters and the end of the book. That is why I would consider the book "a textbook", rather than "a manual" which can give you a systemic view on transformation and a set tools to deal with the process. For these purposes a reader is kindly advised to address to "Creative Destruction", a book written by direct competitors of Jeanie Duck - two McKinsey consultants. The other point of concern is that the author overemphasizes the role of an external consultant. Such an approach depreciates the value of the expertise brought into the book and gives an impression that Ms. Duck's judgments are biased ("you tend to fail if you don't follow a consultant's advice", the book's bottomline).
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Summary: Good book, would have been a better article...
Review: This is a good book on leading change and the effect of change on people (and, in turn, the effect of people on the change initiative). However, it doesn't measure up to Kotter's "Leading Change," Ulrich, Zenger, and Smallwood's "Results-Based Leadership," or Fogg's "Implementing Your Strategic Plan." The problem is that the book really makes you work to mine the little "nuggets" of wisdom that it contains. Essentially, this book is a large case-study of Honeywell's Micro Switch subsidiary. Buried deep within the case study are the management principles that we're all reading the book to discover. I'm not saying that the book isn't well-written and worth the time to read; rather, I'm saying that it isn't easy. I would have preferred some quote-boxes or other graphics that highlighted the necessary information. Perhaps two or three chapters in the beginning that detail the change process and the book's fundamental management principles. In the end, I think this book would have been a fantastic article in Harvard Business Review. However, as a book, it just takes too long to get to the point. Overall grade: B-/B.
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Summary: War Stories and a Process for Change from a Standing Start
Review: Whenever I ask executives about what their biggest problem is, they always say that it is getting the people in their organization to change. The executive rarely sees a need to change her or him self. This perception of the situation is at the foundation of every change problem I have ever seen in my career. This slanted perspective usually reflects having a lousy idea for what needs to be changed that is being legitimately resisted, a poor understanding of how to communicate about change, and a one-sided view of who should benefit from any change (usually the executive). In The Change Monster, Ms. Duck addresses the communication issues directly, the one-sided view of who should benefit indirectly, and pays not enough attention to what the idea for change should be. The book opens with the perspective of organizations that have to change . . . or else because they have just been taken over, taken someone else over, or won't be around if they don't change. Those situations create the potential for a burning platform to get everyone's attention. Relatively little is said about getting attention when the wolf isn't so near the door, except to cite Dr. Grove's advice, "Only the paranoid survive." That's the hard part. I hope the author will spend more time on that point in future books. The book describes a new taxonomy for evaluating where you are in the change process: Stagnation (essentially stuck in a rut that isn't working); Preparation (getting people ready for making an important change); Implementation (figuring out and announcing the details of what to do); Determination (actually carrying through on the plans and new commitments); and Fruition (using the new success to strengthen the foundations of future progress). The author does a good job of pointing out that people and parts of the organization can be at all of these steps at exactly the same moment in time. The leaders need to know where people are, help people know where they are, and encourage progress to the next step. For most people, the key benefit of this book will be in realizing what the important communications challenges are after everyone has been given their new assignments. Many executives will want to drop working on change at that point, and instead drop the ball on the process. You simply cannot communicate too much after the marching orders start to be developed, beginning with asking lots of questions and listening. The emotional commitment has yet to have been made by most in the organization, and you can get counter-reactions instead of support very easily. For others, the key benefit will be the excellent descriptions of the kinds of emotions that are often felt at the various moments and stages in the process, and how these emotions can be constructively addressed. I enjoyed the two extended case histories from Ms. Duck's practice that form the bulk of the book. One involves turning around a fading industry leader that was part of Honeywell, and the other is a consolidation of the research-and-development operations of two merging pharmaceutical companies. The first example is more often on the right path, and the latter is more often not. Good lessons are pentiful in both cases about the messiness and nasty surprises of change that will be helpful to those who haven't been through these major transformations before. Many people will dislike the examples in the book because the clients are off doing the wrong thing all the time except when rescued by the consultants. I'm a little uncomfortable with a book that relies on case histories with so much intensive consulting involvement as really being a management book. Most significantly, you can simply put the wrong change in place . . . or at least one that isn't as good as a readily available alternative. This book focuses so little on that issue that I fear it will be overlooked by those reading this material. In that event, the myopic executive who see the problem of change as "my people won't change" will simply be able to use consultants in new ways to "bribe and cajole my people to change in the ways I like." I fear that solution often won't solve the problem. I admire Ms. Duck's candor about her personal life and her consulting experiences. She's got what it takes to hang in there! After you finish reading this book, I suggest that you think about where you have agreed with others to make a change that isn't occurring. Could it be that you haven't brought other people along with information and emotional reasons to support the change? Find ways for your organization to be the best it can be!
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