Volume I
of the
Leading Change in the Digital Age
series
The Science of Organizational Change
How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture
(2019 Edition)
Paul Gibbons
Publisher: Phronesis Media
2019 by Paul Gibbons
Originally published as The Science of Successful Organizational Change (FT Press, 2015)
For information about buying this title in bulk quantities, or for training materials, webinars, or consulting services, please contact the author paul@paulgibbons.net
Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
Cover and interior design by Dania Zafar
Illustrations by Andrs Goldstein
Printed in the United States
First Printing April 2019
ISBN-13: 978-0-9976512-3-2 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-9976512-4-9 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019938289
About the
Leading Change in the Digital Age
Series
This book is the introductory title in a series called Leading Change in the Digital Age. Although each book can be read without having read the others, in later books I find myself constantly referring readers to more detailed discussions in this book. If I added all the relevant content from this book into the second volume in the series, Impact, Id have a 600-page door stop; all four would make a 1200-page book on leading change. All concepts in change are interlinked (as they ought to be!) For example mindfulness is related to engagement, decision making, team culture, debiasing, leadership, and habit change. Those mindfulness concepts are spread across all four volumes, with an introduction to the science of mindfulness in this book.
My aim in the series is, immodestly, to reinvent change for the 21st-century. I find much of what I read in the most popular change books either trivial or wrong and that has to stop if business is to play its role in forging a better world for humanity, our children and grandchildren.
The series titles are:
Volume I The Science of Organizational Change: How Leaders Set Strategy, Change Behavior, and Create an Agile Culture (Spring 2019)
Volume II Impact: Using Science to Change Behaviors, Hearts, and Minds (Summer 2019)
Volume III Agile Leadership: New Frontiers in Leadership Development and Business Agility (Summer 2020)
Volume IV Leading with Science: The Evidence, AI, and Data Revolutions (Summer 2021)
Praise for
The Science of Organizational Change
If you are tasked with change inside a large organization, this is a must-read. Gibbons has written the single most insightful book on organizational change. You'll laugh at the myth-busting and consultant-bashing while taking copious notes on everything else.
Miki Reilly-Howe , Managing Director, Department26
Organizational change is a huge industry filled with buzzwords and fads and suffering from an unacceptably high failure rate. Paul Gibbons applies scientifically founded, rigorous thought and practical wisdom to this charlatan-filled domain, and produces actionable, sensible, evidence-based insights that can make change efforts much more likely to succeed and organizations much more agile and effective.
Jeffrey Pfeffer , Thomas D. Dee II Professor of
Organizational Behavior, Stanford Business School
The best book on change I have read. Paul Gibbons draws from his extensive experience in change management in big businesses and blends it beautifully with his knowledge of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and even derivative trading to produce a highly readable science-based and groundbreaking study of what has gone right and wrong in managing change in the business arena.
David Bennett , former CEO of Alliance & Leicester PLC
In my 25 years of working with teams and organizations, this is the first book that actually uses science as the foundation of how organizations learn and develop rather than platitudes and well-worn but erroneous beliefs. One of Gibbons strengths is his willingness to tell it like it is, no matter how sacred the cow. Businesses and consultants will use this work for many years to come.
Curtis Watkins , Master Coach
Paul Gibbons rethinks change management with a 21 st -century approach that exchanges cargo cult management for an evidence-based approach built on neuroscience and complexity sciences. Time is overdue to replace Kotters change model for something better suited for a complex world where change is continuous and not a one-time event, and where creative change continuously drives organizational improvement. Paul has succeeded with this, and in the process distills the best research into a book with a framework and ideas that will resonate with the modern leader and the Agile/Lean community. Buy it, read it, and place it on the bookshelf next to The Halo Effect , Switch , and The Fifth Discipline in easy reach for rereading.
Rolf E. Hsnen , Founder, Value at Work
Paul Gibbons has made a valuable contribution to the store of knowledge on change strategy and strategic decision making. By applying the latest findings from the science of decision making to his 25 years of practical in-the-trenches experience counseling executive teams, Gibbons has enabled anyone engaged in strategic decision making to raise their game.
Dan Sweeney, Director, IEE, Daniels College of Business,
University of Denver
Few people bring Gibbons expertise, breadth of scholarship, depth of understanding, and range of experience to that most important of business practices: leading change.
Robert Entenmann , Global Head E-business
for a major European bank
To my parents for giving me a love for science and learning, and to Conor and Luca for reminded me why it matters.
About the Author
Paul Gibbons has a 40-year career straddling international business and academia.
His research and writing explore how philosophy and science can be used to enlighten contemporary business thinking, debunk myth and pseudoscience, and solve practical business problems, including changing culture, developing leaders, and using analytics and evidence to make strategic decisions.
Pauls academic background, starting in math, then in economics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, allows him to bring perspectives to business not typically found in traditional business books.
His consulting career, mostly in Europe, included founding an award-winning teal Organization Development consulting firm, Future Considerations. Paul has coached dozens of CEOs on strategy, change, and talent issues. His change experience includes clients such as Comcast, Shell, PwC, BP, Barclays, KPMG, British Airways, HSBC, Nokia, The Body Shop, Comcast, the NHS, and UK Ministers. He was the change management lead on a $1 billion program for the UKs Department of Work and Pensions.
Paul has appeared in Microsofts Distinguished Author Program and at Google and appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
He now writes, hosts the award-winning Think Bigger Think Better philosophy podcast, plays competitive poker, chess, and bridge, and raises two boys in Colorado.
