You Don't Have to Do It Alone

"This book is an excellent resource -- use it!"
~ Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager
and Full Steam Ahead!

"A complete blueprint for involving others" and "the best of the current crop of books on this topic."
~ Paul R. Brown, New York Times Columnist

Most people in organizations tend to manage projects either as realists or humanists. You Don't Have to Do It Alone brings together the practical view of the realist and the people-oriented view of the humanist, combining the best of both approaches into one role: the "Pragmatic Involver." Covering everything from solving a nagging long-term problem at work that could save a company millions of dollars, to launching a community movement to improve local schools, the book shows how involving others in a project while maintaining one's focus on the nuts-and-bolts details can make big things happen. Using the authors' six major questions - each of which is explored in detail - You Don't Have to Do It Alone shows how success can be attained in a project on any scale, from redesigning a manufacturing process at a paper mill to creating an effective youth center.

Terms of Engagement

The first book to challenge the Change Management Paradigm with a powerful alternative — the Engagement Paradigm, a practical, principle-based strategy for creating successful change outcomes that enables leaders to create energy and commitment instead of apathy and resistance.

- A compelling approach to creating an engaged organization that speaks to leaders at all levels

- Offers a powerful new set of change principles that really work

- Features numerous real-life examples from such companies as British Airways, Hewlett Packard, Detroit Edison, First Union Bank and others

The "Change Management Paradigm," hailed as revolutionary when it first appeared twenty years ago, has lost its way. This failing approach to organizational change has been found to increase bureaucracy and produce cynicism, resistance and resentment. In Terms of Engagement, organizational change pioneer Richard Axelrod explains why the old mechanistic approaches to change don’t work and offers four essential principles that lead to an engaged organization: widening the circle of involvement, connecting people to each other and ideas, creating communities for action and practicing democratic principles. He shows how this systemwide commitment fosters the energetic, flexible, responsive, organizations necessary to thrive and prosper in the 21st century. Balanced, compelling, smoothly blending theory with real-world examples, this practical guide shows how to engage the entire organization in the change process.

What others are saying about Terms of Engagement

"The teachings from this book are essential for us to understand in these times of relentless change."
- Margret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science

"Axelrod defines four leadership challenges that must be met if an organization is to deal with the dramatic changes that are our ongoing reality: widening the circle of involvement, connecting people to each other and ideas, creating communities for action, and embracing democractic principles. Facing these challenges will require a different kind of change. Through real-life examples, he provides readers an opportunity to become active participants in that different kind of change – the change that will energize an organization to new levels of performance and satisfaction."
- Rich Teelink, former Chairman, Harley Davidson

The Conference Model
by Emily and Richard Axelrod
This booklet gives an overview of The Conference Model®, a change strategy which engages the critical mass needed for success in redesigning organizations and processes, co-creating a vision of the future, improving customer and supplier relationships, or achieving strategic alignment.

Harnessing Complexity
by Robert Axelrod
Management theorists are increasingly turning to complexity science in their search for answers to questions about organizational behavior. Axelrod and Cohen are professors of public policy. Their perspective on complexity is on building effective teams from complex groups of individuals. Axelrod is the author of the groundbreaking The Evolution of Cooperation (1984) and its follow-up, The Complexity of Cooperation (1997). Cohen has served on the external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, a leading research facility in the field of complexity. Drawing on their research done for a report on national information policy by the Highlands Forum under the aegis of the Department of Defense, the authors offer numerous business, political, and cultural applications for their model of complex adaptive systems.

The Change Handbook
Peggy Homan and Tom Devane
Margaret J. Wheatley, author, Leadership and the New Science co-author, A Simpler Way, "An invaluable guide to the most promising change work being done in organizations today. This book is a genuine gift to all those seeking to create workplaces that truly welcome people's commitment and creativity."

The Intelligence Advantage:
Organizing for Complexity
by Michael D. McMaster
* Provides a sense of clarity about what organizations are, how they operate and the kind of thinking that is called for to sustain their survival.
* Explores the many possibilities of organizations * Written in a lively, down-to-earth style.
* Offers 'really new thinking' in the area of organizational theory.

Large Group Interventions
by Billie T. Alban and Barbara Benedict Bunker
Organizations today are under intense pressure from all sides. They must learn how to change rapidly in order to accommodate a turbulent environment and survive. Large Group Interventions presents a comprehensive overview of 11 different models of large group intervention, explores their similarities and differences, describes their origins, and presents the methods with vivid examples and case studies that give the reader an inside account of each intervention.

Future Search
by Sandra Janoff and Marvin Ross Weisbord
This nuts-and-bolts guide to "future search" conferences--a new way of conducting meetings to effect dramatic change--explains how to run a meeting at which diverse people with a stake in a single organization or issue come together to seek a common ground and generate creative strategies and a broad commitment.

The Path of Least Resistance for Managers
Robert Fritz
Fritz is the founder of a field called "structural consulting" and has worked extensively with Peter Senge, himself known for his theories on "the learning organization." Fritz is also the author of Corporate Tides (1996), in which he explained the "laws of organizational structure." He calls this new book an updated, redesigned, and rewritten next-generation version of Corporate Tides. He explains that organizational structure may impede organizational learning, that achievement in one part of an organization may not be replicated because of organizational barriers. Moreover, he shows that success in one department of an organization may actually lead to difficulties or problems in another; Fritz calls this phenomenon structural oscillation. He explains the key principles of structural tension and structural conflict. He also provides examples that demonstrate why best efforts do not always result in success and suggests ways to redesign organizations so that they can succeed.

David Rouse

Owen begins by detailing all the practical considerations necessary to create Open Space. He begins with the most important question-should you do Open Space at all-and examines what types of situations are appropriate for Open Space Technology and what types are not. He goes on to look at nuts-and-bolts issues such as supplies, logistics, and who should come and how you should go about getting them there.

Flawless Consulting
Peter Block
Flawless Consulting, the best-selling consulting book of all time, has been the consultant's bible for over 15 years. While other books on consulting outline theories for understanding organizations or for implementing interventions, Flawless Consulting actually describes and demonstrates ways of behaving with clients. This new edition includes illustrative examples, case studies, exercises, and commentary on pitfalls.

Leadership and the New Science
Margaret J. Wheatley
Leadership and the New Science launched a revolution by demonstrating that ideas drawn from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular biology could improve organizational performance. Margaret Wheatley called for free-flowing information, individual empowerment, relationship networks, and organizational change that evolves organically - ideas that have become commonplace. Now Wheatley updates her classic book based on her experiences with these ideas in a diverse number of organizations on five continents.

The Birth of the Chaordic Age
Dee Hock
In Birth of the Chaordic Age, Dee Hock argues that traditional organizational forms can no longer work because organizations have become too complex. Hock advocates a new organizational form that he calls "chaordic," or simultaneously chaotic and orderly. He credits the worldwide success of VISA to its chaordic structure: It is owned by its member banks, which both compete with each other for customers and cooperate by honoring one another's transactions across borders and currencies. The book shows how these same chaordic concepts are now being put into practice in a broad range of business, social, community, and government organizations.