The Science of Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture

This book offers interesting insights which are all productive and are definitely important to understand in today’s world. Furthermore, the way the Gibbons starts with identifying and dissecting unhelpful management myths, false assumptions and bad models, and then proceeds to provide a new knowledge base with case study supported evidence would definitely be useful for inexperienced professionals. Moreover, this book does a wonderful job of synthesizing and incorporating modern behavioral sciences to help apply that knowledge and those skill sets to the business world.

To begin with, both the grammatical errors and structural pitfalls of this book make it unpleasant to read. The first 50-100 pages is all knowledge which you as a seasoned professional and business leader will absolutely unequivocally already know to date. Moreover, the rest of Gibbons’ methodology is really a mix and mash of various behavioral theories applied to successful case studies. Once again nothing novel going on here. While incorporating behavioral economics and social engineering is still something with which business leaders struggle, this book does a poor job of providing a substantive development process to incorporate a unique perspective on organizational change.

Leaders need guidance on change grounded in the latest science, not 20th-century myths. In this updated 2019 edition of The Science of Organizational Change, Paul Gibbons takes us on a journey from change mythology, from New Age change ideas, from “reports in drawers”, and from pop psychology up to the present.In the first comprehensive treatment of behavioral science in business, you’ll learn which cognitive biases caused the 2008 Financial Crisis, Enron, and the Deepwater Horizon.

Later in the book, you’ll discover how evidence-based management is helping leading businesses including Google.There are new concepts such as change-agility that answer the question – “how can organizations be more responsive, so they are the disruptors, rather than the disruptees?” Turbulent environments demand constant change, but the mindset, skills, and behaviors taught to business leaders are unhelpful and sometimes flatly misleading.In The Science of Organizational Change, Paul Gibbons offers the first blueprint for change for that fully reflects the newest advances in mindfulness, behavioral economics, sociology, and complexity theory.

The Science of Organizational Change first identifies dozens of change management myths, bad models, and unhelpful metaphors, replacing some with twenty-first-century research. Paul Gibbons links the origins of theories about change to the history of ideas and suggests that the human sciences will provide real breakthroughs in our understanding of people in the twenty-first century. For example, change fundamentally entails risk, yet little is written for business people about how breakthroughs in the psychology of risk can help change leaders. Change fundamentally involves changing people’s minds, yet the most recent research shows that the provision of facts may strengthen resistance. Starting with a rigorous and evidence-based understanding of what makes people in organizations tick, he presents a complete framework for organizing your company around successful change. With case studies from Google, IBM, Shell, British Airways, British Petroleum, HSBC, and Morgan Stanley, Gibbons goes deeper and broader than any previous discussion of the subject.In this multi-disciplinary treatment of change leadership, you will learn: How a deeper understanding of flaws in human decision-making can help you make far better choices when the stakes are largest.

How new advances in neuroscience have altered best practices in influencing colleagues, negotiating with partners, engaging followers’ hearts, minds, and behaviors, and managing resistance.How to bring greater meaning and mindfulness to your organization – and reap their benefits.How new ideas from analytics, forecasting, and risk are humbling those who thought they knew the future – and how the human side of analytics and the psychology of risk are paradoxically more important in this technologically enabled world.How to improve your boardroom, promoting more effective conversations about strategy, ethics, and decision-making.

What chaos and complexity theories mean in the context of your own business.How to create resilient and agile business cultures, and anti-fragile, dynamic business structures.To link science with your “on-the-ground” reality, Gibbons interviews top CEOs who are applying its principles. You’ll find case studies from well-known companies like IBM and Shell; and deeply relevant quotations from history’s greatest leaders and thinkers.Hailed as “the best book on change in 15 years” and a book that belongs alongside classics such as The Halo Effect, Switch, and the Fifth Discipline – The Science of Organizational Change is a must-read for senior executives and change experts alike.

For business leaders who are not well versed in the theory of behavioral sciences or related case studies, this is a valuable book.  It is a particularly useful book for those who are up-and-coming business professionals or entrepreneurs as a resource to educate on modern theories and provide information on useful case studies.