The Management Bible

Chapter 2. The Challenge of Change

IT'S A NEW WORLD OUT THERE ...

Change and ...

• How it can impact your organization, employees, and customers.

• Understanding the nature of change on the job and your role in it.

• Energizing employees and unleashing their potential.

• Dealing with change.

• Signs of resistance to change and how to get past these roadblocks.

• Leading your team through a crisis.

CHANGE HAPPENS

Take a look at any list of new business books, and you're sure to see more than a few on the topic of change and how to deal with it. It's a simple fact of life that change is all around us. If there's one thing you can count on, it's that whatever business environment you're living in today (your customers' preferences, the names and nature of the competition, industry changes, access to resources, etc.) will be different tomorrow—sometimes in small ways, but often in significant ways.

Because the business environment is constantly changing, managers are increasingly expected not only to foresee these new conditions well in advance of their arrival but also to deal with them effectively when they arrive. Change puts a lot of weighty expectations—and pressure—on those in charge. While throughout most of the twentieth century, companies (and the managers who ran them) were rewarded for their conservatism and their resistance to change (large corporations such as General Motors, American Telephone & Telegraph [AT&T], and Sears Roebuck & Company were fortified islands built to stand up to even the ...