The Planning of Change

by Warren Bennis, Kenneth Dean Benne

As agents of planned change, it's imperative that Extension professionals develop a working philosophy for implementing change efforts in human systems. The Planning of Change may well be considered a cornerstone resource in helping to build such a working philosophy for thought and action. The main authors paradoxically proclaim that "the only constant of today's society is change." However, by planning change, we work toward specified goals in a comprehensive and organized manner. The book is comprised of essays, readings, and assorted works by a broad array of individuals, each making a contribution to achieving the book's central goal of "helping the reader in the application of valid and appropriate knowledge in human affairs for the purpose of creating intelligent action necessary to bring about planned change." In the book, planned change is described as a "conscious, deliberate, and collaborative effort to improve the operation of a human system." Greatest emphasis is placed on the processes of planning change, on how it is created, implemented, evaluated, maintained, and resisted. Other topics discussed include the social and psychological consequences of planned change, conditions necessary for change, strategies for bringing about change, plus the role of training, consulting, and applied research in creating and maintaining change. The book is relevant to both effecting change in the internal structure and function of Extension organization as well as in the clientele systems we serve. In short, The Planning of Change is a valuable book to use in developing a personal philosophy about the ethics and intervention strategies necessary to bring about change.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Warren Gamaliel Bennis is an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership Studies. Bennis is University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California.

“His work at MIT in the 1960s on group behavior foreshadowed -- and helped bring about -- today's headlong plunge into less hierarchical, more democratic and adaptive institutions, private and public,” management expert Tom Peters wrote in 1993 in the foreword to Bennis’ An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change.

Management expert James O’Toole, in a 2005 issue of Compass, published by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, claimed that Bennis developed “an interest in a then-nonexistent field that he would ultimately make his own -- leadership -- with the publication of his ‘Revisionist Theory of Leadership’ in Harvard Business Review in 1961.” O’Toole observed that Bennis challenged the prevailing wisdom by showing that humanistic, democratic-style leaders better suited to dealing with the complexity and change that characterize the leadership environment.