The Six Secrets of Change:

What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive

by Michael Fullan

"Fullan's practical guide is a lucid and encouraging book, likely to appeal to and assist managers at all levels. "

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Lewin’s Change Management Model

Understanding the Three Stages of Change

Change is a common thread that runs through all businesses regardless of size, industry and age.

Our world is changing fast and, as such, organizations must change quickly too. Organizations that handle change well thrive, whilst those that do not may struggle to survive.The concept of “change management” is a familiar one in most businesses today. But, how businesses manage change (and how successful they are at it) varies enormously depending on the nature of the business, the change and the people involved. And a key part of this depends on how far people within it understand the change process.

One of the cornerstone models for understanding organizational change was developed by Kurt Lewin back in the 1950s, and still holds true today. His model is known as Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze, refers to the three-stage process of change he describes. Lewin, a physicist as well as social scientist, explained organizational change using the analogy of changing the shape of a block of ice

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The Dummies Guide to Change, Diffusion and the Tipping Point

Understanding how to initiate change is becoming a central issue for our time. Fortunately nature has given us a model that has a much better chance of working than all the change book's ideas so far.

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Adapting to Change

A few disparate ideas and experiences funneling into this post…
Recently I heard Robert Garmston speak about the need to adapt in times of significant change. He wasn’t speaking specifically of schools but about any organization, and he made an interesting distinction between technical change (which is what most schools have been undertaking) and real, adaptive change. Adaptive change, he said means:

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Elements of Change

The key to achieving more than you currently are, no matter which area of your life or work you are focusing in on now, is change. The old saying rings true: If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you’ve already got. If you keep eating and exercising the way you currently are, you will weigh the same a year from now. If you continue to sell to the same people on the same schedule, you will make the same amount of money next year. In order to move forward, we must change.

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Leading in Times of Transition

12 Leader Competencies: What It Takes In Times of Transition

For many leaders, managing the business and addressing the needs of workers are at odds. They ask, "How can I make the tough decisions if I have to focus on the emotions and concerns of my employees?"

The answer isn't about choosing either the people or the business, according to CCL's Kerry Bunker. Instead, the answer lies in being authentic and building trust.

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Quote for the week on change and creativity

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

- R. Buckminster Fuller, 1895-1983, American Architect and Engineer

More quotations on the Pivotal Quotations pages

Change or die

What if you were given that choice? For real. What if it weren't just the hyperbolic rhetoric that conflates corporate performance with life and death? Not the overblown exhortations of a rabid boss, or a slick motivational speaker, or a self-dramatizing CEO. We're talking actual life or death now. Your own life or death. What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think and act? If you didn't, your time would end soon -- a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change really mattered? When it mattered most?

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Using the Greiner Curve - Surviving the crises that come with growth

Fast growing companies can often be chaotic places to work.
As workloads increase exponentially, approaches which have worked well in the past start failing. Teams and people get overwhelmed with work. Previously-effective managers start making mistakes as their span of control expands. And systems start to buckle under increased load.

While growth is fun when things are going well, when things go wrong, this chaos can be intensely stressful. More than this, these problems can be damaging (or even fatal) to the organization.
The "Greiner Curve" is a useful way of thinking about the crises that organizations experience as they grow.

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More on change

Change Equals Stress: Adjusting to your New Job

Preparing physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually for new job can limit the stress that is associated with the
change.

Change, even positive, exciting, beneficial, seizing-a-great-opportunity change creates and environment of stress.

And, if there were storm clouds brewing, alligator-filled swamps boiling, backstabbing cutthroats plotting, or don't get it bosses at the old site; the "nervousness" might be stronger than if the last job experience had been happy.

Making Change Profitable

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Change Begins with Choice

by Jim Rohn

Any day we wish; we can discipline ourselves to change it all.

Any day we wish; we can open the book that will open our mind to new knowledge.

Any day we wish; we can start a new activity.

Any day we wish; we can start the process of life change.

We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

We can also do nothing.

We can pretend rather than perform.

And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are.

We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make. But while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause.

As Shakespeare uniquely observed, "The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves." We created our circumstances by our past choices. We have both the ability and the responsibility to make better choices beginning today. Those who are in search of the good life do not need more answers or more time to think things over to reach better conclusions. They need the truth. They need the whole truth.

And they need nothing but the truth.

We cannot allow our errors in judgment, repeated every day, to lead us down the wrong path. We must keep coming back to those basics that make the biggest difference in how our life works out. And then we must make the very choices that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives.

And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and needing to make changes in their life - If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree. You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life - and it all begins with your very own power of choice.

To Your Success,

Jim Rohn

This article is excerpted from Jim Rohn's best-selling book, The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle.

To learn more go to http://books.jimrohn.com or call 800-929-0434.