Intentional Revolutions : A Seven-Point Strategy for Transforming Organizations (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)

Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth reading
Review: This a really good read. The authors begin from the premise that organizations are now more than ever forced to operate in a climate of change. Their capacity for transformation is therefore increasingly essential for their survival. The authors outline seven strategies for achieving such a transformation: coercion, persuasive communication, participation, structural rearrangement, role modelling, extrinsic rewards and expectancy.

The different chapters are presented and organised in a readily accessible style, and their argument has a powerful intuitive appeal because of the way it resonates with many of our commonplace, day-to-day experiences of organisational culture and change.

If the book has a weakness it is one common to this genre - namely that it deals much more effectively with what should be done than how it should be done. I find their seven strategies much more useful as a diagnostic or descriptive tool - helping to understand change efforts as merely one of several possible approaches - rather than as a prescriptive blueprint for how change can be implemented.