Change With Confidence by Phil Buckley - Book review

Change with Confidence

Answers to the 50 Biggest Questions that Keep Change Leaders Up at Night

By: Phil Buckley

Published: April 1, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
ISBN-10: 1118556550
ISBN-13: 978-1118556559
Publisher: Jossey-Bass










"For all change leaders, life becomes uncertain, often threatening. When they need the most confidence, many have the least to guide them", writes change management strategist Phil Buckley in his very practical and results oriented book Change with Confidence: Answers to the 50 Biggest Questions that Keep Change Leaders Up at Night. The author describes how critical confidence is as a factor in the success of a change leader, and offers proven advice that focuses on people, to guide the leader through a major change project.

Phil Buckley understands the crucial importance of working with people throughout the entire change management process. The author points out the lasting effectiveness of change that is driven from the people affected by the change itself. The opposite style of change model, based on top down and a more dictatorial approached, is doomed to failure. As a result, Phil Buckley emphasizes how leaders much engage people in all facets of the change management process. The people must be treated with respect, kept up to date on information, given the tools needed to make the change, and be part of creating and implementing their own version of change within the organization.

Phil Buckley (photo left)recognizes the paramount importance of confidence for change leaders to enhance their focus on the project, increases their resolve to complete the project successfully, and to make the best and most appropriate decisions. As the author points out, that confidence is often lacking due to a lack of information, tools, and support from other leaders.

Since change projects require major changes to the previous method for doing things, the author shares fifty answers to making the right decisions and taking the appropriate action at the right time.

Phil Buckley divides the book into four overarching principles to create and implement an effective change management project that has a lasting impact on the organization. The four overall sections include the following:

* Figuring it out
* Planning for change
* Managing change
* Making change stick

For me, the power of the book is how Phil Buckley combines a comprehensive overview of effecive change management with the very hands on skills and techniques necessary to put the concepts into action. The author shares fifty proven techniques, that answer the most challenging questions, that face any leader in a change project. The answers are well organized by topic and sub-heading to facilitate ease of use by leaders. The answers are especially valuable as they place the focus on the people affected by the change.

Each of the sections includes important real world examples of the concepts in action to illustrate the various aspects of the concepts. A leader can learn at a glance which solutions are appropriate, and how effective they have proven themselves to be in similar change scenarios. Overall, this very handy reference book will be returned to over and over again by leaders, as they move through the various phases of the change. The result is an increase in the confidence of the change leaders involved in the process.

I highly recommend the essential and indispensable book Change with Confidence: Answers to the 50 Biggest Questions that Keep Change Leaders Up at Night by Phil Buckley, to any leaders at any level of an organization, who are currently involved in change management or who anticipate a change project in the near future. This book will remove the questions and doubt, for change leaders and managers, and replace them with confidence and resolve.