The Change Cycle: How People Can Survive and Thrive in Organizational Change

by Ann Salerno, Lillie Brock

Dealing with organizational change is about getting through the emotion and commotion with minimal damage to your blood pressure, career, relationships, and confidence. In The Change Cycle, Ann Salerno and Lillie Brock help readers cope by explaining the six predictable and sequential stages of change—loss, doubt, discomfort, discovery, understanding, and integration—and offer examples, tools, and success strategies so you can move resourcefully through each stage.

Each chapter focuses on a single stage of the Change Cycle, described in a lively, informal style peppered with frequent humor. Utilizing stories and essays about the ways people, departments, and teams have successfully dealt with challenges, Salerno and Brock offer examples, tools, and success strategies so individuals at all levels will know what to expect from themselves and others and will be able to resourcefully move through each stage.

Based on the authors’ fifteen years of experience in hundreds of companies and government agencies worldwide and firmly grounded in recent discoveries in social psychology and cognitive neuroscience, The Change Cycle will help readers at all levels take responsibility for how they react and respond in a changing work environment.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Uliamos · Rating 5 out of 5]

About two months ago a big change was announced at the company where I work. Some managers would claim it's not that big a change, and maybe they are right. But part of the change resulted in losing my manager, a person I have always respected and looked up to and learned so much from. When those news broke, I was devastated. Stage 1 hit me massively. The loss seemed almost too much to bear. All my career plans seem to have vanished over night with all those changes that we'd have to adapt to. So, two months later I'm still stuck in some kind of limbo. I used to be so positive about my company and in particular about my role which I fought long and hard for. And now I'm noticing myself pondering questions like "What was it all for?" It's destructive, I know that. I want to break out of this trap, climb out of this hole I seem to have fallen into. It was in fact my old manager who during one of our chats post-change-announcement mentioned the Change Cycle. He showed me the picture and within less than a minute I could see I must be stuck in stage 3. I immediately bought the book and read it as quickly as I could while allowing time for reflection about each of the described stages. I found myself relating to a lot of the described emotions and questions and thoughts running through my head. I'm very cautious of this Danger Zone that seems to be staring in my face, but this book has given me a lot more clarity already. There is still a lot to learn, but at least I think I will be facing the coming stages at least to some extent with a seeing eye. And maybe next time I'm facing such a big change I'll be better prepared from the start. At least I feel hopeful that this is what this book has given me already.

[A. Michelle Patterson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't like these books

These books are always too dry to read! I only bought it to read for a discussion. I only need it for a program that I'm in at work.

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

A field guide to surviving disrupting change

Ann Salerno and Lillie Brock bring good cheer and great advice to a potentially depressing topic. Millions of people face altered lives and circumstances they never imagined possible. They have to change their lives in unexpected ways without preparation. The authors present their six-step “Change Cycle” as a simple, practical way to understand how your emotions work during such shifts and what you need to do to get your life back on track after massive change. Each stage of the process helps you determine what you have to do to master change, and to get to the next stage of adaptation as quickly and constructively as possible. By cheerfully emphasizing the present, and by showing you how to take small, effective steps into the future, Salerno and Brock help you realize that success is possible. They use real life stories to illustrate the ideas and principles they want you to try. getAbstract thinks this easy-to-read, breezy manual will help those who are dealing with job loss, involuntary job change, mandatory relocation or other traumatic shifts.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I narrated the audiobook.

[Tom Philpott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good book on the psychology of change. Despite it's business focus, it has insight at an individual level. It draws from Kubler-Ross, Bridges and others.