The Heart of Change Field Guide

FOREWORD

In 1996, I published a book titled Leading Change. Based on work done over the previous decade, it examined why change efforts so often failed to live up to expectations. It reported common errors organizations made while implementing new strategies, adding new IT systems, reorganizing, acquiring and integrating other firms, or attempting to change their cultures. The book presented an eight-step pattern that illustrated and explained how some enterprises succeed while so many others fail to achieve their goals. The pattern starts with creating a sense of urgency and ends with institutionalizing change in the organization’s culture.

Within three or four years, the book had achieved some notable success, but many of the people using ...