Who Killed Change? The weird tone of this book, possibly.
Today, I’m reviewing one of the million books that have attempted to show how companies kill innovation. Sigh.
The book is the relatively svelte “Who Killed Change?” by Judd Hoekstra and Ken Blanchard. The angle that the authors approached this one was from the vantage point of a mystery. A detective enters the scene of the crime and finds that some mystery criminal has killed Change a la Clue. Instead of Colonel Mustard, though, the options are:
- Culture
- Commitment
- Sponsorship
- Change Leadership Team
- Communication
- Urgency
- Vision
- Plan
- Budget
- Trainer
- Incentive
- Performance Management
- Accountability
Each suspect has been anthropomorphized into a human whose negligence toward Change led to his death. Interviews with those characters bring a series of excuses (ie. why they liked change and thought they did enough to support change, but making it obvious that they didn’t take certain critical steps to nurture change). I can somewhat appreciate approaching business topics from a new angle, but I frankly approve brisk and direct over cutesy and vague, especially when the material in question is formulaic and paint-by-numbers.
The summary of the breakdowns to repelling change seem logical and relatively fully encompassing. I can even imagine using those “characters” as topic titles in an innovation-related project summary. Certainly, a critical lack of any of those items can substantially slow down or even kill well intentioned efforts to drive critical change in an organization.
Again, I appreciate that this wasn’t the usual “the 35 V’s of Protecting Organizational Change” or whatever, but just give me the point straight up next time.
For what it’s worth, I’ve noticed that only three things are really critical to making change a reality in an organization:
1. Your change agent(s)
2. The willingness of senior management to elevate at least one of those change agents to senior management
3. The willingness of the head honcho to spend where necessary on personnel, technology, and the rest
Sufficient energy, planning, and execution of the change agents is really the make-or-break when it comes to making change happen. Just get them the power and resources they need, as long as you’re really willing to dedicate the necessary resources.