Getting to heart of change, facilitation and learning
Getting to heart of change, facilitation and learning Despite differences in workplace culture, questions about, and requirements for, effective organizational change are fairly universal:
•How can we become more proactive, rather than reactive, in dealing with major change?
•What are the required skills for being an effective facilitator, coach or change agent?
•How can supervisors, managers and executives be encouraged and supported to play a leadership role?
•What do the fields of learning and organization development offer in dealing with current issues?
•Where do risks arise and how can they best be handled?
The following books deal with these questions with fresh perspectives and practical ideas on change, facilitation and leadership.
The Heart of Change Field Guide
By Dan S. Cohen, 239 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2005), ISBN 1-59139-775-8
Presenting “tools and tactics for leading change in your organization,” this book builds upon the eight steps outlined in John Kotter’s milestone Leading Change (1996) and Kotter and Cohen’s The Heart of Change (2002):
•increase urgency, build guiding teams and get the vision right in order to create a climate for change;
•communicate for buy-in, enable action and create short-term wins to engage and enable the whole organization; and
•implement and sustain the change — don’t let up, make it stick.
This new book provides a wealth of worksheets, diagnostics and self-assessments for each step in the process, checklists of issues and tactics, models and guidelines.
It concludes with a thorough approach to change readiness assessment summarized in a “risk wheel,” which identifies areas of concern and obstacles that need to be addressed. Practitioners will appreciate the practical examples and clear “how-to” resources.
The Facilitator Excellence Handbook
By Fran Rees, 402 pages, Pfeiffer (Second edition, 2005), ISBN 0-7879-7070-0
In this update of her popular 1998 book, Rees provides a comprehensive guide to the role, techniques (verbal, non-verbal, recording, reading a group, facilitating consensus) and methods of facilitation. Included are new chapters on handling difficult situations and conflict resolution.
The book outlines the design and execution of three levels of facilitation requiring progressive skill development:
•meeting facilitation;
•team facilitation; and
•organization facilitation.
There’s a thorough model of facilitator competencies, with an accompanying CD-ROM featuring a skills profile, to help readers assess and improve their effectiveness.
The author describes facilitation as both a science and an art. The book concludes with a look at managing yourself in order to address the question posed in the final chapter: “What makes a great facilitator?”
Lies About Learning
Edited by Larry Israelite, 227 pages, ASTD Press (2006), ISBN 1-56286-454-8
“This book sheds some light on the hype — the lies — about learning that are spread by product marketing literature, training association conference presentations and pronouncements by industry pundits.” The editor and 11 other seasoned learning industry contributors aim to “provide business executives and learning professionals with enough ammunition to ask the right questions, kick the right tires and maintain the right level of skepticism about what they read and hear about learning products, tools and technologies as they pursue their goals.”
Myths are challenged and advice is offered on all aspects of the field: learning design, technology tools, e-learning, research, consultants and vendors. There are also insights into how learning is managed, the role of chief learning officers, careers in learning and the learning organization.
Those new to the field, or those seeking to renew their sense of direction, will benefit from the book’s perspectives and the closing message: “We must become educated, discerning consultants, creators and consumers… What does matter is that we are experts at what we do, regardless of the path we took to the profession of learning, that we accept responsibility for the results we achieve and that we make meaningful, measurable contributions to the businesses we support.”
Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense
By Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, 277 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2006), ISBN 1-59139-862-2
Perhaps you work with a CEO or general manager who becomes infatuated with the latest, greatest thing. Or perhaps, as an HR practitioner, you’re vulnerable to the same tendency to adopt novelty ideas or even old ones in new clothing.
This new book starts with some tough questions for senior executives: “Are you making the right decisions? Or are you copying what seems to work for other companies, acting on ingrained beliefs rather than hard evidence and doing what you’ve always done?”
Guidelines for evidence-based management include:
•treat old ideas like old ideas;
•be suspicious of breakthrough ideas and studies — they almost never happen;
•celebrate communities of smart people and collective brilliance, not lone geniuses or gurus;
•use success and failure stories to illustrate practices supported by other evidence, not necessarily as valid evidence; and
•take a neutral approach to ideologies and theories and base management practices on the best evidence, not what is in vogue.
Reinventing Organization Development
By David Bradford and Warner Burke, 230 pages, Pfeiffer (2005), ISBN 0-7879-8118-4
What, exactly, is organization development (OD)? Why do different people and companies use the term to mean different things? Is the term OD still relevant and where is OD headed?
Some professionals still identify with OD’s early days of socio-technical systems research and group dynamics. Relevant chapters include “A historic view of OD” and “OD: A wedding of anthropology and organizational therapy” by Edgar Schein.
Others recognize the shift to a focus on change management and more recent systematic approaches to business transformation and systems integration. Chapters include “Contemporary challenges to the philosophy and practice of organization development” and “OD: requiem or reveille?”
The book’s editors write about “The crisis in OD” and “The future of OD?” while Chris Argyris deals with the “demise” of OD. Jerry Harvey asks: “The future of OD, or why don’t they take the tubes out of Grandma?” Other contributors wonder: “Has the well gone dry?”
So, if OD’s position in the organization is frustrating, this book may offer some catharsis. Fortunately, it also contains some insightful and positive principles and directions for the future, including seven “first principles” described by Tony Petrella and Peter Vaill’s “Paradigm for professional vitality.”
To read more book reviews, go to www.hrreporter.com and enter “Bookshelf” as a search term.
Ray Brillinger is a Toronto-based certified management consultant working internationally with organizations on change management, HR strategy and performance improvement. He can be reached at [email protected].
•How can we become more proactive, rather than reactive, in dealing with major change?
•What are the required skills for being an effective facilitator, coach or change agent?
•How can supervisors, managers and executives be encouraged and supported to play a leadership role?
•What do the fields of learning and organization development offer in dealing with current issues?
•Where do risks arise and how can they best be handled?
The following books deal with these questions with fresh perspectives and practical ideas on change, facilitation and leadership.
The Heart of Change Field Guide
By Dan S. Cohen, 239 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2005), ISBN 1-59139-775-8
Presenting “tools and tactics for leading change in your organization,” this book builds upon the eight steps outlined in John Kotter’s milestone Leading Change (1996) and Kotter and Cohen’s The Heart of Change (2002):
•increase urgency, build guiding teams and get the vision right in order to create a climate for change;
•communicate for buy-in, enable action and create short-term wins to engage and enable the whole organization; and
•implement and sustain the change — don’t let up, make it stick.
This new book provides a wealth of worksheets, diagnostics and self-assessments for each step in the process, checklists of issues and tactics, models and guidelines.
It concludes with a thorough approach to change readiness assessment summarized in a “risk wheel,” which identifies areas of concern and obstacles that need to be addressed. Practitioners will appreciate the practical examples and clear “how-to” resources.
The Facilitator Excellence Handbook
By Fran Rees, 402 pages, Pfeiffer (Second edition, 2005), ISBN 0-7879-7070-0
In this update of her popular 1998 book, Rees provides a comprehensive guide to the role, techniques (verbal, non-verbal, recording, reading a group, facilitating consensus) and methods of facilitation. Included are new chapters on handling difficult situations and conflict resolution.
The book outlines the design and execution of three levels of facilitation requiring progressive skill development:
•meeting facilitation;
•team facilitation; and
•organization facilitation.
There’s a thorough model of facilitator competencies, with an accompanying CD-ROM featuring a skills profile, to help readers assess and improve their effectiveness.
The author describes facilitation as both a science and an art. The book concludes with a look at managing yourself in order to address the question posed in the final chapter: “What makes a great facilitator?”
Lies About Learning
Edited by Larry Israelite, 227 pages, ASTD Press (2006), ISBN 1-56286-454-8
“This book sheds some light on the hype — the lies — about learning that are spread by product marketing literature, training association conference presentations and pronouncements by industry pundits.” The editor and 11 other seasoned learning industry contributors aim to “provide business executives and learning professionals with enough ammunition to ask the right questions, kick the right tires and maintain the right level of skepticism about what they read and hear about learning products, tools and technologies as they pursue their goals.”
Myths are challenged and advice is offered on all aspects of the field: learning design, technology tools, e-learning, research, consultants and vendors. There are also insights into how learning is managed, the role of chief learning officers, careers in learning and the learning organization.
Those new to the field, or those seeking to renew their sense of direction, will benefit from the book’s perspectives and the closing message: “We must become educated, discerning consultants, creators and consumers… What does matter is that we are experts at what we do, regardless of the path we took to the profession of learning, that we accept responsibility for the results we achieve and that we make meaningful, measurable contributions to the businesses we support.”
Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense
By Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, 277 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2006), ISBN 1-59139-862-2
Perhaps you work with a CEO or general manager who becomes infatuated with the latest, greatest thing. Or perhaps, as an HR practitioner, you’re vulnerable to the same tendency to adopt novelty ideas or even old ones in new clothing.
This new book starts with some tough questions for senior executives: “Are you making the right decisions? Or are you copying what seems to work for other companies, acting on ingrained beliefs rather than hard evidence and doing what you’ve always done?”
Guidelines for evidence-based management include:
•treat old ideas like old ideas;
•be suspicious of breakthrough ideas and studies — they almost never happen;
•celebrate communities of smart people and collective brilliance, not lone geniuses or gurus;
•use success and failure stories to illustrate practices supported by other evidence, not necessarily as valid evidence; and
•take a neutral approach to ideologies and theories and base management practices on the best evidence, not what is in vogue.
Reinventing Organization Development
By David Bradford and Warner Burke, 230 pages, Pfeiffer (2005), ISBN 0-7879-8118-4
What, exactly, is organization development (OD)? Why do different people and companies use the term to mean different things? Is the term OD still relevant and where is OD headed?
Some professionals still identify with OD’s early days of socio-technical systems research and group dynamics. Relevant chapters include “A historic view of OD” and “OD: A wedding of anthropology and organizational therapy” by Edgar Schein.
Others recognize the shift to a focus on change management and more recent systematic approaches to business transformation and systems integration. Chapters include “Contemporary challenges to the philosophy and practice of organization development” and “OD: requiem or reveille?”
The book’s editors write about “The crisis in OD” and “The future of OD?” while Chris Argyris deals with the “demise” of OD. Jerry Harvey asks: “The future of OD, or why don’t they take the tubes out of Grandma?” Other contributors wonder: “Has the well gone dry?”
So, if OD’s position in the organization is frustrating, this book may offer some catharsis. Fortunately, it also contains some insightful and positive principles and directions for the future, including seven “first principles” described by Tony Petrella and Peter Vaill’s “Paradigm for professional vitality.”
To read more book reviews, go to www.hrreporter.com and enter “Bookshelf” as a search term.
Ray Brillinger is a Toronto-based certified management consultant working internationally with organizations on change management, HR strategy and performance improvement. He can be reached at [email protected].
