Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations

I first experienced this change model as a young management consultant in the late 1960s, and was overwhelmed by its effectiveness then. Over the years, I have made this approach a central tenet of how I work with client organizations and our own. Richard Axelrod's book is the best description I have seen to date of the key elements of this model and the reasons why they work. I heartily endorse that you become familiar with this book, which will undoubtedly be a standard reference for many years to come. I was particularly pleased to see how well he has combined the perspectives of many other business and nonbusiness thinkers in this area.The key challenge to successful change is in communication. Everyone agrees on that from Axelrod to Bob Kaplan to John Kotter. The four-aspect model here is particularly well designed to overcome communication stalls and miscommunications. These aspects are widening the circle of involvement to get more ideas from more people (this is a corollary to the key observations of complexity science for self-organizing order at the boundaries of systems), connecting people to each other (in order to drop barriers to communication), creating communities for action (by establishing a mutual purpose and direction), and embracing our social concepts of democratic treatment of all (to overcome skepticism about the authenticity of engagement potential).By way of analogy consider the writing of the original Constitution of the United States. How would this have worked out if George Washington had simply dictated what he wanted? As you can imagine, there is no way that George Washington could have come up with that document by himself. Well, that's the way most organizations try to make changes. The leader dreams up what she or he wants and tell or sells everyone else. Next, what if George had called in four of his buddies from Virginia and hired two consultants from New York? Would they have developed the Constitution we have? Probably not. It mostly would have reflected the perspectives of Virginia and New York. Even if they had, no one would have been very committed to it. The process the Constitutional Convention actually used is very similar to the one that Mr. Axelrod espouses.The book's material is clear, the examples compelling, the warnings are timely, and the directions are appropriate.What are the limitations then of this book? I see them in five areas: First, you have to experience this process to appreciate its power. So you can read this book all you want, and you may not "get it." My advice is to put yourself in a situation where you try out this model and find out how well it works. Second, there are a lot of other things that can go wrong that are not described here. Think about Russia. The country has gone a long way to create free markets but new enterprises are often floundering. Part of the reason is that people don't think and don't yet prefer to operate in entrepreneurial, partic

Richard Axelrod has finally moved beyond the paradigm for change that has dominated this field for the last two decades. The inherent weaknesses of the current model are exposed. The four leadership challenges Axelrod defines if an organization is to cope with ongoing change: widening the circle of involvement, connecting people to each other and ideas, creating communities for action, and embracing democratic principles, are ideal for school communities. Through real life examples and clear writing he provides readers models of how they might contribute their multiple perspectives and skills to change in their schools.If readers can connect Axlerod's insights with Senge's new book, "Schools that Learn," they will have superb guidance on how their schools might be redesigned to meet the needs of a new age.I am the Director of Faculty Development at a Jesuit high school in San Francisco. We are currently using Axlerod's model with great success.

Organizational change advocate Richard Axelrod challenges the commonly accepted change management paradigm in Terms Of Engagement: Changing The Way We Change Organizations. Axelrod draws upon his research, experience, and expertise to offer a practical and effective approaches he calls the "engagement paradigm", a system that will provide corporate leaders with a practical, principle-based strategy for creating successful change outcomes. Implementing the engagement paradigm will result in employees and managers grasping the big picture and align around a common purpose; fully distribute accountability; quickly identify performance gaps and thereby improving both productivity and customer satisfaction; spark creativity as employees, suppliers, and customers contribute their best ideas; create capacity for future changes to meet future challenges in the highly competitive and rapidly globalizing economies.

I've been consulting for organization change for 20 years from small human service agencies to the Boeing Company. Terms of Engagement is a real winner. The principles are profound and provide a basis for change that truely involves the whole organization. I've noticed that many organization improvement efforts actually create resentment and resistance. The approaches outlined in Terms of Engagement move quickly and actually create change instead of merely plans for change. It fits old economy industry and new economy startups. Buy it, then do the work.

Have you ever been a part or a victim of a failed change initiative? Have you witnessed resentment or cynicism over change strategies where a new process was created by a privileged few and drilled down through the organization? Are you involved in or responsible for bringing about organizational change and afraid of making mistakes that may alienate other employees or cause needed improvements to be rejected? If so, this is the book to read! The book provides clear and practical guidelines for changing organizations. The examples and case studies concentrate on methods to utilize the wealth of knowledge in an organization to accomplish change. The guiding principles are "Widening the Circle of Involvement, Connecting People to Each Other, Creating Communities for Action and Embracing Democratic Principles". Examples of tools are well described and illustrated with case studies for each of the guiding principles. Examples of other popular change management strategies are also discussed, analyzed and illustrated. This book is a great field guide and reference for changing organizations responsibly. It is well written easy to read, and goes a long way towards demystifying where popular change methods fail and what to do about it.