Change Agility: A guide to help you think about change management differently

by Jason Little

Changing our organizations is hard, and changing how we think about change is even harder. We all fall in love with the first successful approach for change that we use, and once it stops working for us, it's tough to change how we approach change. While we love chasing the next big change method, framework, or playbook, history has shown those flash-in-the-pan ideas render themselves obsolete as the world of business evolves leaving us chasing our tails for the next set of best practices.Who you are and the attitude you bring towards changing your organization is vastly more important than the method, framework, or playbook you pick. This book will help you with three • How you can transform how you manage change work. • How you can transform how you think about change. • How you can transform how you work with agile teams. Sounds like magic, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's not, it's hard work, and it's up to you. Traditional change management has focused on making other people change their behaviour to ensure successful change. Maybe the problem is that we're looking at change through the wrong lens. This book will help you look at change through the lens of true agility. True agility is timeless and based on the values and principles of the agile manifesto. You'll be sorely disappointed if you expect to see a fancy looping diagram or a set of recipes that tell you they'll "ensure maximum ROI and change success". Oh, and you won't see any bullshit statements like that in the book either. What you will find is plenty of stories, insightful tips, and practical actions based on my 20 years of experience working as a product owner, scrum master, agile team member, change manager, internal and external agile coach, and organizational change agent. Above that, you'll get connected to a global community of change agents sharing their ideas and stories about how they facilitated meaningful change.Being "more agile" in change management is about you. It's about you taking the time to challenge your assumptions and beliefs. The day I learned how to change my views on change was the day my happiness level being a change agent skyrocketed and I hope this book inspires you down the path of facilitating meaningful change.

Genres: Nonfiction

278 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 13, 2020

About the author

Jason began his career as a web developer when Cold Fusion roamed the earth. Over the following years, he moved into management, Agile Coaching and consulting. The bumps and bruises collected along the way brought him to the realization that helping organizations adopt Agile practices was less about the practices, and all about change.

In 2008 he attended an experiential learning conference about how people experience change and since then, he’s been writing, and speaking, all over the world about helping organizations discover more effective practices for managing organizational change. He is the author of Lean Change Management and an international speaker who has spoken all over the world from Canada, the US, Finland, Germany, Australia, Belgium and more.

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jason Little is an ideas person. He clearly loves Agile and change management and creativity and innovation. But:
He released a beta version of a book that wasn’t ready for release.
Very agile and innovative, but I would have preferred to wait, even pay more, and read a book that had been thoroughly edited and proofread. I could not get my head around the typos and the lack of structure. I spent too much time wondering what he actually meant.
I don’t know whether to review this book based on what it is or what it will be. I don’t know whether to judge the author against the world he lives in or the one I live in.
I’m stuck in the environment and culture that he rails against. I don’t need big ideas and grand statements; I need tools and techniques, and ways to move from where we are to where I want us to be.
This is not the book for that.
I give it 2 stars for what it is now and what it is for me. An extra star for what it can become and what it might be for others.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although my philosophy is aligned with the principle that is better done than perfectly not done , there are some mistakes that should have been avoided with a proper revision and edition of the book. One thing is to continuously improve concepts, receive feedback and incorporate it, sometimes changing the initial concept, other thing is to have mistakes in the writing, that most of the times feel like laziness to review the English.

[MARCO F. KILONGKILONG · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Book was better

Little's first book was better in my opinion primarily because the anecdotal stories in that one seemed to follow better with the concepts he was trying to advance. It's not a bad book by any means. I found several chapters useful but if I had go choose between "Lean Change Management" and this one, I'd choose the first.