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Library Journal Review

In business, reengineering is the idiom of the day. Brought to prominence by Michael Hammer and James Champy (Reengineering the Corporation, HarperBusiness, 1993), reengineering calls for an organization to examine itself and its processes. Ironically, whatever the impetus, 70 percent of all reengineering efforts result in failure. In this work, Smith, a management consultant and coauthor of The Wisdom of Teams (LJ 2/1/93), attempts to move reengineering in a more positive direction and provides a syllabus for understanding and implementing a reengineering effort. For Smith, the emphasis is on people and performance. Change is never easy, and the value of the book is in the real situations and examples where change has been attempted, sometimes successfully, sometimes not (lessons can be learned from failure). Aside from being an excellent primer with clearly illustrated models, the last chapter, dealing with personal leadership, is noteworthy. Any organization contemplating a change effort should read this chapter before taking the journey.‘Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Two recent books submit very different perspectives on change management. Katzenbach declares he's providing the practicum missing in earlier professional tomes on change management. "How to," then, is his focus. His specific subject? Real change leaders (RCLs), defined as "a new breed of managers who meld cutting-edge change management skills and tools with old-fashioned discipline and pragmatism." Case histories from the likes of a Mobil division, Sealed Air, and an AT & T business unit are integrated into the text to buttress his points. He and his team show what questions to ask and what tools to use to energize people so that they give customers what they need quickly and with quality. Smith is also concerned with specifics. He proffers 10 principles that center on rules to get people to change. Concrete, specific performance consequences are the only reasons people will change skills, behaviors, and relationships, he contends; further, no one can take responsibility for another individual's decision to change. Sound like old news? In a way it is, but it's one of the first times a change guru has acknowledged the psychological aspect of work behavior. --Barbara Jacobs