The single most important message in this book is very simple. People change what they do less because we give them analysis that shifts their thinking than because we show them a truth that influences their feelings. This is especially so in large-scale organizational change, where you are dealing with new technologies, mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, new strategies, cultural transformation, globalization, and e-business. In an age of turbulence, when you handle this reality well, you win. Handle it poorly, and it can drive you crazy, cost a great deal of money, and cause a lot of pain.

The lessons here come from two sets of interviews, the first completed seven years ago, the second within the last two years. About 400 people from 130 organizations answered our questions. We found, in brief, that:

Highly successful organizations know how to overcome antibodies that reject anything new. They know how to grab opportunities and avoid hazards. They see that bigger leaps are increasingly associated with winning big. They see that continuous gradual improvement, by itself, is no longer enough.

Successful large-scale change is a complex affair that happens in 8 stages. The flow is: push urgency up, put together a guiding team, create the vision and strategies, effectively communicate the vision and strategies, remove barriers to action, accomplish short term wins, keep pushing for wave after wave of change until the work is done, and, finally, create a new culture to make new behavior stick.
The central challenge in all 8 stages is changing people's behavior. The central challenge is not strategy, not systems, not culture. These elements and many others can be very important, but the core problem without question is behavior, what people do, and the need for significant shifts in what people do.

Changing behavior is less a matter of giving people analysis to influence their thoughts than helping them to see a truth to influence their feelings. Both thinking and feeling are essential, both are found in successful organizations, but the heart of change is in our emotions. The flow of see-feel-change is more powerful than of analysis-think-change. These distinctions between seeing and analysis, between feeling and thinking, are critical because, for the most part, we use the latter much more frequently, competently, and comfortably than the former.

When we are frustrated, we sometimes try to convince ourselves there is a decreasing need for large-scale change. But that is not true. Powerful and unceasing forces are driving the turbulence. When frustrated, we sometimes think that problems are inevitable and out of our control. That's also not true. Some people handle large-scale change remarkably well. We can all learn from these people. CEOs can learn. First-line supervisors can learn. That's the point of this book.

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