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Peter L. Brill and Richard Worth. The Four Levers of Corporate Change. New York: AMACOM, 1996, 192 pages (advance uncorrected proofs), $22.95.
Organizations often look for one-dimensional solutions to their multidimensional problems. This is why off-the-shelf approaches like reengineering and Total Quality Management fail to produced desired and sustained change in complex work organizations. It is why Brill and Worth wrote The Four Levers of Corporate Change.
In this well written and easily digested work, the authors attempt to take a realistic look at the complexity of organizational management and provide real-life solutions. They focus on two areas of high relevance and importance to organizational change management today. First, they describe the major ways in which organizations most often need to change and why a single one-dimensional answer fails. But, knowing what needs to be done is not sufficient without knowing how to make it happen.
This leads to the authors' second contribution, prescribing four levers (i.e., change drivers) that enable the change process to be successful: (a) understanding human nature to turn negative traits like anxiety and suspicion into positive qualities such as trust and dedication; (b) wielding power skillfully and effectively, a critical factor that can backfire and destroy a company's entire change effort if misapplied; (c) using group social processes to transform employees' belief systems and drive change throughout the organization; (d) employing effective leadership to get employees to identify with the change initiative and keep it moving along.
Brill and Worth fully succeed in their first objective (describing what has to change), but leave me wanting more than they offer in addressing the second objective...