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Consulting
Beckhard, Richard. Agent of Change: My Life, My
Practice. Jossey-Bass, 1997.
Comments: Beckhard is one of the "founding fathers" of Organizational
Development and Change Management. In this book you’ll see the birth and
evolution of OD at the same time that you learn how Beckhard grew from a
pioneering OD consultant into one of the field’s greatest thought leaders. He
describes principles of action-research-based consulting, commitment-based
change management, as well as inter-group confrontation and conflict
resolution.
Block, Peter. Flawless Consulting: A Guide to getting
Your Expertise Used, 2nd Ed., Jossey-Bass, 1999.
Comments: One of the best books ever written on consulting. Guides you
through contracting, diagnosis, feedback, and dealing with resistance. The new,
Second Edition, includes chapters on implementation and whole-systems methods.
As Kathie Dannemiller wrote in her Amazon.com review, "Don’t leave home without
it!"
Harrison, Roger. The Collected Papers of Roger Harrison.
Jossey-Bass, 1995
Harrison, Roger. The Consultant’s Journey. Jossey-Bass, 1995
Comments: These two books take you inside the mind and guide you through
the developmental path of another great Organizational Development Consultant.
Classics include Harrison’s "how tos" on choosing the depth of intervention and
on role negotiation.
Lippitt, Gordon and Ronald. The Consulting Process in
Action. Second Revised Edition. Pfeiffer & Company, 1986.
Comments: A classic on consulting roles, phases, and choosing
interventions (both the intervention’s purpose and the system level at which to
intervene – organization, team, interpersonal or intrapersonal).
Schaffer, Robert. High Impact Consulting, Jossey-Bass,
1997.
Comments: One of the best books I’ve read on defining the project’s scope
and determining the client’s readiness to sponsor the effort and make it
succeed. A "must read" on contracting.
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Change Management
Bridges, William.
Managing
Transitions: Making the Most of Change. Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Comments: The classic book on navigating the process of letting go of the
old and attaching to the new.
Connor, Daryl. Managing at the Speed of Change: How
Resilient Managers Succeed and Prosper Where Others Fail. Villard Books,
1993.
Comments: As a psychologist, Connor has spent his professional life
studying what differentiates changes that "take" from those that don’t. This
book concisely captures his findings: the stages of adaptation for changes
perceived as positive and negative, the roles that it takes to launch and
sustain organizational change, and differences between more-resilient people and
organizations and less resilient ones.
Kotter, John. Leading Change. Harvard
Business School Press, 1996.
Comments: Explains Kotter’s extensively researched, eight-phase process
for leading change (Establish urgency. Create a guiding coalition. Develop
vision and strategy. Communicate the change vision. Empower broad-based action.
Generate short-term wins. Consolidate gains. Anchor new approaches in the
culture.) What leaders need to do to make change successful.
Noer, David, Healing the Wounds: Overcoming the Trauma
of Layoffs and Revitalizing Downsized Organizations. Jossey-Bass, 1993.
Comments: Compassionately explains "survivor’s syndrome" and explains how
to disengage from the organizational co-dependency that makes people feel
victimized by change.
Senge, Peter; Roberts, Charlotte; et al. The Fifth
Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning
Organization.
Currency Doubleday, 1994.
Comments: Explains key learning organization concepts and models in
understandable terms and useful interventions. Examples: advocacy vs. inquiry,
the "Ladder of Inference," unpacking a conversation’s un-discussables through
Argyris’ Left- and Right-Hand Column exercise, systems thinking, scenario
planning, and more!
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Diagnosis:
Mink, Oscar and Barbara; Downes, Barbara; Owen, Keith., Open Organizations: A Model for Effectiveness, Renewal,
and Intelligent Change. Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Comments: Provides an excellent 3x3 diagnostic matrix (3 levels:
organization, group and individual. 3 essential purposes: unity, internal
responsiveness and external responsiveness). Chock-full of models, "how tos,"
and interventions. An all-in-one tool kit.
Nadler, David. Feedback and Organizational Development:
Using Data-Based Methods. Addison-Wesley, 1977.
Comments: The classic book on how to get clients to own and follow
through on diagnosis.
Redding, John C. and Catalanello, Ralph F. Strategic
Readiness: The Making of the Learning Organization. Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Comments: How to cultivate action learning teams so that organizational
change and adaptation grows from the inside, instead of being super-imposed by
"experts" from the outside. How to create organizations that think
holographically, not mechanistically.
Robinson, Dana Gaines and James C., Performance
Consulting. Berrett-Koehler, 1995.
Comments: Shows how to define the target (desired performance) the actual
(current performance) for both the larger system and the client’s immediate
unit. Shows how to sort causes into those within and beyond the client’s
control. A good framework for gathering and interpreting information, but avoid
using it in an expert-driven, doctor-to-patient way.
Weisbord, Marvin. Organizational Diagnosis: A Workbook
of Theory and Practice. Addison-Wesley, 1991.
Comments: The classic "6-box" Diagnostic Model (purposes, structure,
relationships, rewards, leadership, coordination, and outside environment).
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Strategy
and Purpose:
Hamel, Gary and Prahalad, C.K.
Competing for the
Future. Harvard Business School Press, 1994.
Comments: The classic book on selecting and
cultivating the core competencies of the organization.
Hogg, C. Davis. Team-Based Strategic Planning.
AMACOM, 1994.
Comments: Provides a step-by-step process for guiding leadership teams
through strategic planning in 5 phases: Where are we now? (internal and external
assessment) Where do we want to be? (mission, vision and objectives) How will we
get there? (strategies and programs) Who must do what? (responsibilities and
accountability) How are we doing? (on-going review and adaptation).
Mintzberg, Henry, Ahlstrand, Bruce, and Lampel, Joseph.
Strategy Safari. The Free Press, 1998.
Comments: My all-time-favorite book on strategy formation. It compares
different approaches to strategy formation. It shows how strategy formation can
take very different paths from the rigorously analytical (the Planning School)
to the creative and emergent (the Entrepreneurial School). Don’t lead a
strategic planning retreat until you’ve read this book – it will help you to
integrate the kaleidoscope of perspectives that it takes to create robust and
resilient futures.
Nolan, Timothy M., Goodstein, Leonard D. and Pfeiffer, J.
William. Applied Strategic Planning: The Consultant’s Kit. Pfeiffer & Co.
1992.
Comments: I’m usually disappointed by "all-in-one" intervention kits;
this is the exception. It’s very understandable, provides useful models and
assignments, and "hand-holds" the consultant through a sound strategic planning
process.
Van Der Heijden, Kees. Scenarios: The Art of Strategic
Conversation. John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Comments: Leaders who have generated a range of options for possible
futures can respond more flexibly and creatively to the unexpected than those
who have focused on carefully engineering a single favorite plan. This book
demonstrates that the greatest value of planning is in the collective learning
process, not in the plan.
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Culture:
Argyris, Chris and Schon, Donald.
Organizational
Learning II: Theory, Method, and Practice. Addison-Wesley, 1996.
Comments: Chris Argyris has done the deepest and most long-standing
thinking about uncovering differences between the "the talk" and "the walk." In
this book he explains the difference between Model 1 operating assumptions and
behaviors (those which focus on saving face) and Model 2 operating assumptions
and behaviors (those which focus on straight talk and joint learning). Argyris
explains how to surface undiscussables. This is a "must read" but not
an easy read.
Kotter, John P. and Heskett, James L.
Corporate Culture and Performance. The Free Press, 1992.
Comments: Compelling research on the impact of culture on organizational
performance. Differentiates cultures that support performance (they’re strong
and adaptive) from those that undermine performance (they’re either mushy or
rigid and non-adaptive). Shows leadership’s role in creating a sense of urgency,
helping the organization to understand the big picture (its multiple interests –
customer, employees, shareholders, etc.) and staying the course over time.
Schein, Edgar. The Corporate Culture Survival Guide.
Jossey-Bass, 1999.
Comments: The most recent book from the "Godfather" of research on
corporate culture. This volume explains what culture is (behaviors, values and
shared assumptions), why it matters, how to tell how functional is, and how to
adapt it.
Harrison, Roger. Diagnosing Organizational Culture:
Trainer’s Manual. Pfeiffer & Co. 1993.
Harrision, Roger and Stokes, Herb. Diagnosing Organizational Culture.
Pfeiffer & Co. 1992.
Comments: An instrument and facilitator’s guide with a great 4-quadrant
model of cultural archetypes (the Power culture, the Role or bureaucracy
culture, the Achievement culture, and the Support culture). The archetypes are
helpful for becoming aware of the upsides and downsides of each archetype, but
like any archetypal model (MBTI, DISC, etc.) beware of the tendency to
caricature and oversimplify complex interconnected dynamics.
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Structure:
Galbraith, Jay R.
Designing Organizations. Jossey-Bass,
1995.
Comments: An easy-to-read book (unusually easy-to-read for Galbraith) on
how to reach greater congruence among strategy, structure, processes, people and
rewards. Galbraith is a leading organizational design guru.
Hupp, Toni; Polak, Craig; Westgaard, Odin. Designing
Work Groups, Jobs, and Work Flow. Jossey-Bass, 1995.
Comments: Okay, I’m biased, this is my book. While many books on
organizational design explain how to redesign the macro structure of an
organization, they’re sketchy on how to redesign work at the micro, work-group
level. This book explains, step-by-step how to redesign work processes, how to
reconfigure work groups, and how to create jobs that create a sense of ownership
and initiative.
Mohrman, Susan A.; Cohen, Susan; Mohrman, Allan M.,
Designing and Leading Team-Based Organizations: A Workbook for Organizational
Self-design. Jossey-Bass, 1997.
Comments: The best, most-practical, easy-to-follow workbook on when and
how to shift to a team-based organizational design.
Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organization. Sage, 1986.
Comments: Like "Strategy Safari," this book compares different lenses for
understanding its subject. Don’t start down the path of organizational redesign
until you’ve read it. However, it’s not an "easy read." In 1998,
Morgan came out with an "Executive Edition" of this book – it may be easier
going than the original.
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Facilitation &
Team Development:
Doyle, Michael; Straus, David. How to Make
Meetings Work: The New Interaction Method. Jove Books, 1976.
Comments: For those new to facilitation, this is where to start. It
explains key meeting roles, differences between the facilitator and the
person-in-charge, types of meetings and how to facilitate them, and even how
to set up a meeting room.
Dyer, William G., Team Building: Current
Issues and New Alternatives Third Edition. Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Comments: A foundational book about team building. It explains essential
criteria for forming teams, types of teams, common team developmental challenges
and how to work through them. It explains how to prepare, facilitate and follow
through on team building initiatives.
Fisher, Kimball and Mareen. The Distributed Mind:
Achieving High Performance Through the Collective Intelligence of Knowledge
Work Teams. AMACOM, 1998.
Comments: Explains differences between conventional work and knowledge
work and explains how to launch and sustain knowledge worker teams. The
authors believe that successful knowledge work teams function as one
distributed mind. This is no easy feat since most knowledge workers identify
more strongly with their professions than with their organizations, and they
tend to value independence over loyalty. This book explains how to create
"distributed-mind" thinking on knowledge worker teams.
Grove Consultants, Effective Facilitation: Achieving
Results with Groups. The Grove Consultants International, 1994.
Comments: An excellent and comprehensive tool kit that explains
principles of facilitation, developmental stages, how to plan and facilitate
meetings to accomplish the purposes of each stage. Provides creative ways to
visualize and diagram the flow of meaning for each type of purpose.
Johnson, Barry. Polarity Management: Identifying and
Managing Unsolvable Problems. Human Resource Development Press, 1996.
Comments: Have you ever been asked to help a client figure out how to
change his/her opponents, or how to fix a problem that’s been fixed before but
never seems to stay fixed? Chances are your client is facing a polarity to
manage, not a problem to solve. It’s a critical distinction. This "must read"
book spells out how to tell the difference between problems and polarities and
explains how to manage polarities so that you shift from win/lose to win/win
results.
Kaner, Sam. Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory
Decision-Making. New Society Publishers, 1996.
Comments: An essential book that walks through the 5 stages of group
decision making (Business as usual, Divergent zone, Groan zone, Convergent
zone, and Closure) and explains the facilitator’s key tasks in guiding a group
through each stage. It also explains how to tell when a decision is "fully
cooked" (it has sufficient support to make it work) and when it’s only
"half-baked" (people express tacit approval but then fail to put enough "skin
in the game" to support it).
Kearny, Lynn. The Facilitator’s Tool Kit: Tools and
Techniques for Generating Ideas and Making Decisions in Groups. Human
Resource Development Press, 1995.
Comments: Another excellent and comprehensive facilitation tool kit. This
one provides an extensive variety of meeting processes. It groups them into
process types (starting, expanding, narrowing and closing) and explains when and
how to facilitate each.
Reddy, W. Brendan (editor). Team Building: Blueprints
for Productivity and Satisfaction. NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral
Research, 1988.
Comments: An outstanding collection of team building models and "how tos"
from organizational development thought-leaders (Warner Burke, Marvin Weisbord,
Allan Drexler and David Sibbet, Kathie Dannemiller, Eva Schindler-Rainman, and
others).
Schwarz, Roger. The Skilled Facilitator: Practical
Wisdom for Developing Effective Groups. Jossey-Bass, 1994.
Comments: A "must read" that helps a facilitator select an appropriate
role for content expertise that s/he’s expected to contribute, identifies ground
rules for productive group work, and explains when, how and what level to
intervene to "unpack" differences and keep a group on track.
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Leadership:
Block, Peter.
The Empowered Manager: Positive Political Skills at Work. Jossey-Bass, 1987.
Comments: A great book on shifting from a patriarchal, bureaucratic
mentality toward an entrepreneurial one in which people serve out of a
commitment to meaning, contribution and service.
Block, Peter. Stewardship: Choosing Service Over
Self-Interest. Berrett-Koehler, 1993.
Comments: To make leadership effective, it’s essential to understand how
our thinking about it dis-empowers people. In one of my favorite passages, Block
explains, "Our search for strong leadership expresses a desire for others to
assume the ownership and responsibility. The effect is to localize power,
purpose, and privilege in the one we call the leader." An essential
understanding for anyone who’s trying to help organizations shift from heroic to
developmental leadership.
Bradford, David and Cohen, Allan. Managing for
Excellence. John Wiley & Sons, 1984.
Comments: Even though this book is titled "Managing for Excellence," it’s
as much about leadership as it is about management. This classic book explains
the differences between heroic models of leadership and developmental ones. Then
it explains how to navigate the stages of team development to create a shared
responsibility team.
Heifetz, Ronald. Leadership Without Easy Answers.
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994.
Comments: Heifetz maintains that it’s a leader’s job to provide the
container for a community to work through its issues and create resolutions that
serve its larger purpose. He identifies five essential leadership tasks: 1.
Identify the adaptive challenge (the issues, values and stakes). 2. Keep the
level of distress within a tolerable range so that the group can do its adaptive
work. 3. Focus attention on ripening issues, not on distractions. 4. Give the
work back to the people but at a rate they can stand. 5. Protect the voices of
leadership without authority.
Kotter, John. A Force for Change: How Leadership
Differs from Management. The Free Press, 1990.
Comments: Kotter’s classic that differentiates management from
leadership. Management is planning and controlling. Leadership is envisioning,
motivating and community building. Management keeps you on-track to established
objectives. Leadership helps you blaze a new trail to outcomes that aren’t yet
fully defined. Both are essential. Kotter explains the developmental experiences
that contribute to each set of competencies
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Coaching:
Flaherty, James. Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others.
Butterworth Heinemann, 1999.
Comments: An excellent introduction to coaching from a philosophical
rather than psychological perspective. (Focuses on the search for meaning.) A
person’s results depend on the way s/he "reads" the situation. To change
results, help the client change the way s/he "reads" the situation and
interprets feedback. The philosophical foundations at the beginning of the book
may be difficult reading but the coaching process and agendas that follow
provide maps for focused, insightful and moving coaching sessions. (And they
don’t turn the client into set of pathologies to be fixed!)
Hargrove, Robert. Masterful Coaching. Pfeiffer,
1995.
Comments: A coaching model for both consultants and managers. Explains
how to apply learning organization concepts (from thought leaders such as Senge
and Argyris) to coaching. How to move from single loop learning (getting better
at what you’re already doing) to double loop learning (changing your
assumptions) and even triple loop learning (changing your identity – how you
define yourself). How to facilitate action learning within individuals and
teams. How to establish learning conversations, unpack inferences, and balance
advocacy with inquiry.
Hyatt, Carole and Gottlieb, Linda. When Smart People
Fail (Revised Edition). Penguin Books, 1993.
Comments: Helps you "get inside" the loss of identity that clients
experience when they lose a job or suffer a major career setback. Enables you to
help them find the gift inside the loss and create a more-congruent energized
new work life.
Mink, Oscar and Barbara; Owen, Keith.
Developing High-Performance People: The Art of Coaching. Addison-Wesley,
1993.
Comments: A book that’s chock-full of coaching models, "how tos," and
instruments. A comprehensive tool kit.
O’Neill, Mary Beth. Executive Coaching with Backbone
and Heart: A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges.
Jossey-Bass, 2000.
Comments: A new book that may become a classic. Most books on coaching
are written to managers about how to coach their employees or to coaches about
how to guide clients through career, personal and interpersonal development.
This book is written to leadership coaches about how to guide executives. It
focuses on the systems lens as well as the more familiar group, interpersonal,
and intrapersonal lenses that you’ll find in other coaching books. Well-written
and gutsy, this book will stretch your coaching envelope.
Simonsen, Peggy. Career Compass: Managing Your Career
Strategically in the New Century. Davies-Black, 2000.
Comments: A great career coach explains the process of strategic career
management including looking inward (examining core competencies, values and
purpose), looking outward (analyzing the job market and potential employers) and
looking forward (planning goals and developmental path through career
development stages and 21st century career challenges.)
Whitworth, Laura; Kimsey-House, Henry; Sandahl, Phil.
Coactive Coaching. Davies-Black Publishing, 1998.
Comments: Describes and gives examples of essential coaching skills.
Explains how to address 3 key client needs: fulfillment, balance, and process.
Also provides coaching dialogues, skill-building exercises and tools.
Coaching in 1999, a Special Issue of Consulting
Today, Edited by Griffin, Paula Yardley, High Meadows Resources, 1999.
(For info call 914 591-5522.)
Comments: A great introduction to both new and tried-and-true approaches
to coaching. Also provides a great resource list for developing coaching skills.
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Conflict:
Beer, Jennifer and Stief, Eileen.
The Mediator’s
Handbook. New Society Publishers, 1997.
Comments: A great beginner’s book on mediating conflict (not just for
formal mediation). It explains what kinds of issues can and can’t be mediated,
how to establish a safe and neutral context, how to guide parties to resolution,
how to write an agreement and when to call it quits. Contains the best wisdom,
principles, tools, and tips of the renowned Friends Conflict Resolution
Programs.
Fisher, Roger and Ury, William. Getting to Yes:
Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. Penguin Books, 1981.
Comments: The classic and essential book on conflict resolution.
Explains essential principles of conflict resolution (separate the people from
the problem; focus on interests, not positions; invent options for mutual gain;
use objective criteria). Also explains key negotiation practices to deal with
impasses (such as: identify the BATNA – best alternative to a negotiated
agreement, "unpack" positions – explore what’s underneath them.)
Levine, Stewart. Getting to Resolution: Turning
Conflict into Collaboration. Berrett-Koehler, 1998.
Comments: This book explains, better than others, how to shift disputants
from an adversarial mindset to a collaborative one. It also spells out the
on-going costs of failing to make this shift.
Slaikeu, Karl A. When Push Comes to Shove: A Practical
Guide to Mediating Disputes. Jossey-Bass, 1996.
Comments: Provides a wonderful format for gathering the critical
information and perspectives needed to reach resolution – a Conflict Resolution
Matrix for identifying each party’s: interests, facts/history, best alternative
to a negotiated agreement, possible solutions, and integrated resolution.
Stone, Douglas; Patton, Bruce; and Heen, Sheila.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. Penguin Books,
1999.
Comments: A new book from the Harvard Negotiation Project (the folks who
brought us the original conflict resolution classic, Getting to Yes).
This one is destined to become a classic as well. This book explains 3 parallel
conversations that occur whenever we deal with uncomfortable issues: The "what
happened" conversation to establish what happened and who’s at fault. The
"feelings" conversation to own feelings and establish whether they’re valid and
appropriate. And the "identity" conversation to establish each party’s worth and
competence. The authors explain how to shift each conversation from a
counterproductive "message delivery stance" (to set the record straight or draw
a "line in the sand") to a productive "learning stance" (to unpack differences,
understand a larger reality, and come to a win/win resolution).
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