Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Consider the metaphor of a theater. One play is in performance, even as the
company prepares for a new play simultaneously. Leaders who can focus, like
the director of a play, on tangible, concrete features of their
organizations, can make change happenon target, on time, on budget.
Solutions to problems emerge from practical actions taken to revise and
communicate the vision, and modify plant, equipment, tools, processes,
worker agreements, and products or services. Developing detailed daily or
weekly action plans puts effective changes into motion, as change expertise
becomes as second nature as running the business.
From the Publisher
Change Is the Rule will be among the required reading for my executive
leadership team as we continue to drive for dramatic business growth and
value creation for Texaco in the highly competitive domestic energy markets.
– W. Robert Parkey, Jr., President, Texaco Natural Gas Inc.
This book is filled with practical guidelines and is a must-read for leaders
guiding their organizations through turbulent times. – Walt Natemeyer,
Ph.D., President, North American Training and Development.
Dr. Holland has identified a basic universal management theme (change) and
illuminated the path toward practical ways to lead toward and implement
change. – Bette Ann Stead, Professor, College of Business Administration,
University of Houston.
What a great uncluttered roadmap for understanding, embracing, and leading
change. We have trained over 10 million leaders worldwide, and change is
their biggest challenge. This book should be next on their reading list!
– Dr. Paul Hersey Chairman, Center for Leadership Studies.
This book is a must-read for anyone trying to manage the change process. In
a real-life application, Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC followed this
process in forming a successful merger of two petroleum companies. – J.
Louis Frank, President, Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC.
Dutch is the most down-to-earth change advocate I have met in my 35 years of
struggling with change. Where else do you have a University of Texas, Ph.D.
that will hit you about the head to get your attention? This is not
academia, this is the real world! – Fred Hubbard, Senior Vice President,
Bell Helicopter Textron.
From the Inside Flap
If you want to eat this month, you gotta learn how to run the business. If
you want to eat this time next year, you gotta’ learn how to change the
business.
It is with this straightforward approach that author Winford E. Dutch
Holland offers a practical guide to mastering organizational change.
Hollands clear-cut, step-by-step methods are refreshing among the many
esoteric and theoretical treatises on the subject of change.
Change Is the Rule is built upon several ideas to make the following key
points:
– Organizational change is now the rule and no longer the exception – Change
does not happen in a vacuumall managers must become as adept at managing
change as they are at running the day-to-day business – An organization is
first and foremost a mechanical systemnot a social systemand change occurs
when the four mechanical attributes of an organization are altered: Vision,
Work Processes, Plant/Equipment/Tools, and Performance Management Systems –
An organization is analogous to a theater company, and managers have
mastered change in their organization when they can make changes as easily
and efficiently as theater companies change from one play to another –
Individual employees must master the change process as easily and
professionally as an actor does when moving from a great performance in one
play to another
Hollands use of a theater metaphor to describe organizational change,
labeled throughout the book as Mind-Clearing Examples, provides logical
insights into the right and wrong ideas on organizational change. As a
manager, you will quickly learn that the day-to-day tools already within
your competency are the key tools needed for successful changeif used in the
framework Holland uses throughout the book.
With Change Is the Rule you will have a roadmap for change that you can
confidently follow. You will see organizational change as a creative act of
leadership that can be doneon target, on time, on budget.
The author, Dutch Holland, March 28, 2000
Our clients wrote this book!
This book is my best effort at writing down simply and clearly what my firm
and I have learned about change mangement from/with our clients over the
last 20 years. We know that what we have written here works…because we see
it work with our clients. They tell us that the methods described here help
them see and understand what to do and how to do it to make their companies
change.
I am very appreciateive to those clients who have worked with us over the
years to cut through a lot of the theoretical stuff to get to the underlying
“mechanical” requirements for change. They have urged us to make it simple
and concrete, not mystical and psychological. They have encouraged us that
our metaphor, “an organization as a theater company,” really works to get
them to see organizational change in a totally new and clear way. They are
the ones who keep saying, “we gotta run the business and we gotta change the
business…both at the same time…and we must have tools that help us!”
So here is a big “thank you” to the guys and gals we’ve worked with at NASA,
Texaco, Marathon Oil, IBM, Florida Power and Light, USAA, Solvay, Union
Carbide, Chase, Weingarten Realty, Bell Helicopter Textron, Enron, Edwards
Air Force Base, Texas Childrens’ Hospital, Schlumberger, Marathon-Ashland
Petroneum, Chevron, and HEB…to name a few!
If you read this book, I think you will see change in a different way…a
way that will allow you to use your existing skills to increase your change
performance…as a manager or as an employee. Good luck!
About the Author
Lessons from Change-Master Winford E. Dutch Holland, Ph.D.
Consultant, trainer and speaker, Dutch Holland has taught hundreds of
leaders and teams how to transform their organizations in his 30 years as
leader, chairman and CEO of the Texas-based consulting firm Holland & Davis.
He has spearheaded change with such organizations as The Houston Space
Center, Eli Lilly, Shell Oil as well as with companies in crisis. His work
inside Union Carbide after the Bhopal tragedy and inside NASA after the
Challenger disaster was instrumental in helping each organization cope with
the crisis, then incorporate the lessons in order to move on as a stronger
entity.
He shares with clarity and insight the steps needed to turn change mastery
into the second nature required for businesses to succeed in this climate of
relentless change. Leaders, managers, and employees alike will find his
message promoting detailed action plans a welcome relief from the typical
flavor of the month change programs that are typically long on theory and
short on practical results.
Excerpted from Change Is the Rule : Practical Actions for Change: On
Target, on Time, on Budget by Winford E. Dutch Holland, Dutch Holland.
Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights
reserved
The Way We Are Changing Organizations Is Not Working
The prevailing standard in running a business today is on target, on time,
and on budget. Buyers expect to get what they paid for, on time, and at the
price agreed to in advance. Given those buyer expectations, companies have
adjusted their ways of operating in order to make this new standard a
reality.
Unfortunately, there is a totally different standard in place for changing
an organization: off target, very late, and way over budget. Anybody who has
been a part of changing organizations has experienced changes that didnt
turn out the way they were planned or that did not produce the results that
were desired. They likely experienced delays of weeks, months, and even
years, and cost overruns of everything from a few percentage points to
orders of magnitude. Some have even experienced abandonment of
organizational changes in midstream with nothing to show for it except
frustration and depleted bank accounts!
A popular observation is that 70 percent of the reengineering projects that
companies use to change themselves and the way they do business do not
achieve the desired results. When many organization members who have gone
through change look back on it and label it as nightmarish, destabilizing,
chaotic, and life changing, we know that something is ineffective! Its time
to question the way we go about changing organizations.
Are all companies having trouble changing? For companies who have not had to
change very often, the occasional change is especially difficult, but they
usually muddle through. For companies more experienced with organizational
change, the change process goes better. But even the companies who do change
best cannot do it as well as they can run their daily businesses. Of those
companies best at change, few would be willing to adopt a change standard of
on target, on time, and on budget. And therein lies the problem; companies
are not changing well enough to avoid negative consequences, much less use
change as a competitive weapon. The Case for Improving the Way We Change
Organizations
Todays business world is dramatically different from the one we knew just a
few short years ago. Greatly increased rivalry from global competitors, more
demanding customers, every-rising stockholder expectations, and accelerating
technology all contribute to a business world that is different today and
changing for tomorrow. Change is no longer the exception; it is now the
rule!
When change was the exception, firms could win in their industries by being
the best at running their day-to-day businessescranking out the products and
services that had been winners in the market place for some time. Winning in
this kind of environment was based on slowly climbing the learning curve and
gradually refining work processes. Winning in this environment was very much
like an automobile race run on an infinite straightwaythe winner would be
the car that had the highest top speed and endurance.
Competing successfully in a world where change is the rule and not the
exception requires a new standard. When change becomes the rule, firms can
no longer win by being the best at running their business in an unvarying
way. Now the basis for winning is how well firms can change the ways they
run their businesses. The firms that win in this new business environment
are those who can get new products and services into play on target, on
time, and on budget. Firms that win are able to retool employee mindsets and
skills on target, on time, and on budget. Winning in this environment is
very much like the automobile race run on a grand prix circuitthe winner
will be the car that can get to high speed on the straights and be extremely
fast through the curves.
Todays business world has raised the bar. Firms must now be able to run and
change their businesses with equal proficiency. But why cant businesses
already do that? Why is changing an organization so different from running
one that is not changing? First, it is more difficult to change a business
because you also have to keep running it! Organizations are not allowed to
shut themselves down, stop serving customers, and stop paying stockholders
while the company works through the change. Companies literally have to do
two things at onceand that makes it difficult, time consuming, and energy
depleting.
Second, companies do not know how to change with the same degree of
precision in which they run their businesses. Adding to the difficulty that
many companies face what can only be charitably described as ineffective and
incomplete ideas about organizational change.
Change Is the Rule: Practical Actions for Change: On Target, on Time, on
Budget
by Winford E. Dutch Holland, Dutch Holland
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Hardcover – (May 2000) 245 pages
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