Change processes in organizations are time consuming, expensive, and often don’t create the intended results. This book creates a new way for leaders to relate to change from a place of deeper understanding. Based on years of research, consulting, and teaching, the models and frameworks described in this book have been applied successfully in organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, IBM, Facebook, Charles Schwab & Company, and Accenture.

The book provides breakthrough thinking to leaders who find themselves in the chaos of multiple, high amplitude changes that cannot be managed from an autocratic or even a participative mindset. The successful transformation of a human system does not require that people change who they are so much as it requires they become more of who they are—more like themselves. Change does not require new step-by-step models offered by an outside expert. It requires teaching people how to become model builders. As a result of this deeper transformation of mindset, not only will people in the organization be able to manage the particular change crisis facing them in the moment, they will develop a new relationship to change so that strategic thinking and breakthrough business outcomes become part of the organizational norm.

This book will primarily appeal to experienced leaders, senior managers, and change agents who have learned that the textbook recipes for initiating or responding to change don’t work. It is also useful supplementary reading for students of organizational studies and leadership.