Clyde's Corner

Clyde Lindley

Quotable Quotes

"Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind."
-- Helen Keller

"We fall in love with a personality, but we must live with a character."
-- Peter De Vries

"Progress might have been all right once but it has gone on too long."
-- Ogden Nash

"The easiest way to predict the future is to invent it."
-- Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Slogan

"Everything is funny as long as it's happening to someone else."
-- Will Rogers

"We are only free only to the degree that we understand the role that time plays in our lives, and learn to manage time instead of it managing us. "
-- John Burke Kendrich (Personal Productivity: How to Increase Your Satisfaction in Living. Chapter 9, "Time Management," 1988, M.E. Sharpe; New York.)^*

^*This is repeated from a quote in 1995, and is supplied again because of its importance now; see "Stress in the Workplace," Clyde's Corner, April 1996 ACN.

How Do You Change an Organization to Transform It to Meet the Demands of the Next Century?

One thing we do know is that it is not going to be easy. A basic start is to learn from experienced leasers. To assist you in getting started, I have selected four books that should help you chart your course. Of course there are other references, but these seem basic to the task.

In Press: Gowing, M.K., Kraft, J.D., & Quick J.C. Eds. The New Organizational Reality: Downsizing, Restructuring, and Revitalization. APA Books, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.

This book analyzes the nature of the challenges in managing the new realities in the workplace. Organizations and workers will need to develop new skills and different approaches to their work in a continuous learning environment which encourages their creativity. The . . . "nation's economic well-being rests on the effectiveness and capabilities of its working population. The nation's interests are tied to nurturing and investing in the health and well-being of its workers, who are its human capital."

The fifteen chapters, by different authors, cover a multitude of factors that must be considered in revitalizing organizations to become/remain successful:

The economic, technological & informational forces driving change.
The economic context of the new reality
Downsizing, restructuring, privatization and layoff survivor sickness
Financial experience of 300 firms that have downsized
Case studies
- AT&T
- Chaparral Steel
- Air Force Base Closure
- US Office of Personnel Management - results based on Career transitions & revitalization
- Environmental Protection Agency - major reorganization and new role for human resources office.
Leadership in the new organization
Rekindling work commitment
Holistic stress management at Corning
Change, transition and a healthy-wealthy future

1996: Kotter, J.P. Leading Change. Harvard School Press: Boston, MA.

This book is ". . . more hands on and practical," it has few references, but provides many examples of what seems to work and what doesn't. It addresses the most common reasons why transformations of organizations fail and outlines an eight-stage process of creating major changes. The concepts of "management" vs "leadership" are crucial: "Management - keeps a complicated systems of technology and people running smoothly (planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling & problem solving); Leadership - a set of processes that create organizations in the first place and adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Defines the future and aligns people with vision and inspires them to make it happen despite obstacles." Kotter emphasizes that the ability to transform organizations is 70 to 90% leadership and only to 10 to 30% management.

1993: Hammer, M. & Champy, J. Reengineering the Organization: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. Harper Business/Harper Collins:New York.

This book offers a brand new vision of how companies should be organized and managed if they are to survive in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Reengineering means starting over from scratch. It does away with our current and antiquated theories of work such as the need for divisions of labor, elaborate controls or directions, the managerial hierarchy, etc. Managers will have to reinvent their companies to compete in the new world.

Four chapters describe how companies changed their organizations to become different in their operations and structure in conducting their businesses: Hallmark, Taco Bell, Capitol Holding, and Bell Atlantic. These are fascinating accounts of how employees were empowered and motivated to change.

Reengineering . . . "offers no quick, simple, and painless fix . . . It requires that people running companies and working in them change how they think as well as what they do. It requires that companies replace their old practices with entirely new ones. Doing so isn't easy. It cannot be accomplished with motivational lectures and catchy wall posters."

The fourth book recommended is for managers and others who may need to brush up on their statistical knowledge. They don't have to become experts, but they will need to understand and interpret statistical data.

1996: Mandel, B.J. & Lassing, R.E. Statistics for Management. Dangary Publishing Co.: Baltimore, MD.

Excerpts from Book Reviews, Quality Progress, Jan., 1997, Vol 30 No.1.

"Statistics for Management is an excellent book that can be used for self study or as a text for a structured course." The authors "assume the reader knows little about statistics . . . The authors' emphasis on the importance of critical thinking when analyzing statements that express statistical results helps readers understand the concepts and limitations of statistics. . . . .

. . . The authors have taken a great deal of time organizing the book so it flows smoothly; to get full benefit, it needs to be studied from front to back.

This is an excellent book for disciplined self-starters who want to learn statistics on their own and for people whose schedules don't allow them to attend a college course." - Norman Frank: RE/SPEC Inc.

Clyde is the Director of the Center for Psychological Services, 1608 Sanford Road, Silver Spring, MD 20902. Phone: (301) 754-1070.