Essential Managers: Managing Change - Softcover

"Change is good" is the new mantra of organizational culture--but that doesn't mean that change is easy to take, especially if it's your responsibility to initiate and manage it. This snappy 72-page guide to weathering the winds of workplace change equips you with a quick-and-dirty plan for finessing change in three crucial phases: planning change (deciding what to change and what not to change, involving others, making an action plan, anticipating its effects and resistance to it, and testing and checking your plans), implementing change (communicating it, assigning responsibility, developing commitment to it, and limiting resistance), and consolidating change (monitoring progress, maintaining momentum, and building on it for future growth). On every page of this hard-working little handbook, boxed tips, mini case studies, handy to-do checklists, and easy-to-follow and adaptable flow charts demystify the process, and bring it to life. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you might find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But, if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do just fine.

It's worth mentioning that the book is part of the "Essential Managers" series by reference publisher Dorling-Kindersley--a series comprising 20 itty-bitty books on business and career topics that range from communication, leadership, and decision-making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the talent of the "For Dummies" book series for breaking down a lot of information into bite-sized bits and sidebars with Dorling-Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, the books don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking or reflect necessarily any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as if someone had collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics, and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages--studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and, on the last few pages of each volume, a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand. Again, they're not for anyone who's looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the covered subjects, but they're perfect as a quick general-interest reference; and, let's face it, they're so damn cute, and look so smart in a neat little stack or row, that probably you'll want to buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy

Robert Heller is a leading authority on management consulting. He was the founding editor of Management Today, and as editorial director of Haymarket Publishing Group, he supervised the launch of a number of highly successful magazines including Campaign and Computing. He is founder of the Working Words, a consulting firm specializing in business communications. He has been a contributor Experienced and novice managers alike will be Relevant to every work environment, from large corporations to small businesses.