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Title: Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas
ISBN: 0201741571
Author:
Mary Lynn Manns
Linda Rising
Publicate Date: 2004-09-04
Publish: 2004-09-04
List Price: $34.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $12.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $7.85
Amazon Merchant Price: $23.09
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| Customer Review: |
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1: A great help for introducing change
Fearless Change is a catalogue of patterns for introducing change in a company. Personally I've been in the role of change agent for years and this book provided me many "ah-hah"s which you get from reading good patterns. Most of the patterns I've applied in the past. Now I realized it and I got a name for them, which makes me more able to reuse the patterns. Some of the patterns were new to me and I've applied them immediately in my work.
The book is organized in three parts. The first part tells short stories on the different phases of change. These stories already made me understand the basics of the patterns and how they were related. The second part has a couple of case studies. Personally I found this part rather boring, but it was very short. The third part of the book is the actual pattern catalogue which provided the needed details.
The book was easy to read and, except for the case studies, didn't make me feel bored at any time. I've learned an awful lot from the book and it gave me some new tools in my toolbox when trying to introduce change.
I've rated this book 4 stars, which should have been 4.5 starts, but I don't have that option. I wouldn't want to give it 5 stars for the small boring parts and since I wouldn't call it perfect yet, but close! The books is an absolute must for anyone introducing change in an organization though!
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2: Patterns for change
Another patterns book -- it certainly is a popular type of book these days. I got about half-way through this one before someone else wanted to read it. What can I say? Not bad. Recommended reading if you're trying to introduce a change in the way people work. The stories or case studies are pretty readable. But I'm not sure how much it helps to give little (pattern) names in brackets inside every other sentence. Pick up any book about industrial success like Marriot or The HP Way and you'd probably do just as well. The important thing is to read about others' similar successes and how they did it, and always to get help from lots of other people.
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3: An useful catalog
Just like all books on patterns, this gives you the feeling of 'oh, this is soooo obvious' the first reading it. The fact is that a second after reading it you start thinking and talking about brown bags, angles and evangelists and refer to the book all the time. Linda and Mary Lynn give us an idiom, a very very useful idiom.
Also, the book is funny. Must read.
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4: Change will always be hard, but this book helps a lot
Change is hard. I've been part of companies that merged, were acquired, acquired others, downsized drastically, changed the CEO, moved corporate headquarters to another state and completely changed their target market. The change was difficult in each of these circumstances. That's not particularly surprising. What is surprising is that change is also difficult when doing something as seemingly simple as changing the company health plan. I wish I'd read this book before going through those changes.
A large part of my current work is in helping companies manage the transition from how they currently develop software to developing software with an "agile process." The book codified some of the things I've done for years without thinking about why but more importantly it also presented ideas I hadn't thought of. For example, the "Champion Skeptic" pattern says to designate a skeptical, strong opinion leader to be the "official skeptic." I've always made a point of involving these skeptics because they can become your best advocates if you convert them. However, I've experimented with the idea as presented here and it works well.
Change will remain hard, even after reading this book. But, you'll be much better prepared and you should find many of the patterns here very helpful.
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5: Powerful, yet simple, change toolkit
I had found myself moderately successful at introducing new ideas and influencing change in my organizations, but never knew why, or how to improve my ability to influence and sustain the change effort. The lightbulb was illuminated immediately upon getting a few patterns into this book- I had been, in one way or another, using some of these patterns without realizing it. Opportunities I had failed to take advantage of in the past became obvious as well in many patterns that were new to me, and in the past went unrecognized (next time, they will either be easy to spot or part of the plan in the first place!)
Once you are able to recognize techniques as patterns, influence becomes something much more controllable. This is a powerful, easy-to-use (and reuse) toolkit for introducing ideas and influencing change. I believe that those experienced in influencing change will find a well thought out set of techniques and those unsure of even how to start will have a great roadmap and set of practices to start with and to invoke as-needed as their change efforts evolve.
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