Off My Bookshelf V

I rarely like books that are merely collections of published articles. But the Harvard Business School Press has put out a fairly noteworthy series of books that cast a net over various articles in the Harvard Business Review. One of them is on turnarounds.

Whether you're in an organization that needs turning around or just a person who should be turning around his or her individual mindset, this is a great book to prod you into new thinking. One of my favorite pieces in the collection is "Changing the Way We Change," a thoughtful article written by Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann, and Linda Gioja. Pascale has long been one of best thinkers on the subject of change and has consistently made a contribution in the field over many years.

Here's the actionable stuff on change in this essay, seven "disciplines" that come from -- of all places -- the U.S. Army.

• Build an intricate understanding of the business. As the authors note, "An organization's members do best when line-of-sight understanding bridges the gap between overall strategy and individual performance."
• Encourage uncompromising straight talk. It's a shame how this is still true in most organizations.
• Manage from the future. "The most essential aspect of managing from the future is to alter the institution's point of view...this discipline means internalizing some future goal so the institution can plant its feet in that future and manage the present from there," the authors write.
• Harness setbacks. Everything is never going to work. You're going to make mistakes. So learn from them. "Harnessing setbacks is a matter of recontextualizing failure, treating breakdowns as breakthroughs, seeing defeat as opportunity," says Pascale and crew. This is so true. It's also important to reach far enough to fail at least a little.
• Promote inventive accountability. The article points out that as a leader you have to single out and reward creative acts of initiative.
• Understand the quid pro quo. Every change effort makes big and tough demands on people. Leaders have to make sure that people get "commensurate returns." Above and beyond reward and recognition, people need to be reminded that they are learning things that make them more valuable. They also need to have a sense of meaning in their work, a sense that contributes to their satisfaction with the work. And finally, employees need to feel they have a say in shaping the organization's new destiny.
• Create relentless discomfort with the status quo. That's obvious, right. Otherwise, why would there be a need for change?