 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | A recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. Desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive. Given that the status quo is so potent, how can we change ourselves and our organizations?
In Immunity to Change, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey show how our individual beliefs--along with the collective mind-sets in our organizations--combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. By revealing how this mechanism holds us back, Kegan and Lahey give us the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can bring our organizations forward with us.
This persuasive and practical book, filled with hands-on diagnostics and compelling case studies, delivers the tools you need to overcome the forces of inertia and transform your life and your work.
When it comes to change, desire and motivation aren t enough. Kegan and Lahey examine why change is so hard and offer innovative, practical insight to overcome the internal and external obstacles and to meet the challenge of change. Anne Sweeney, Co-Chair, Disney Media Networks; President, Disney-ABC Television Group |
Average Customer Rating:   Exceptional Insight I highly recommend this course of study for anybody who is trying to achieve individual or organizational change. By digging out those fundamental immunities we have to change, the authors create and environment that really does help bring about lasting improvement in performance. Embracing Change Authors Robert Kegan & Lisa Lahey have put together another exceptional treatise; if properly applied, any organization should be better equipped to handle the changes necessary to thrive.
Most of us already realize that innovation is a critical component for making advancements in any endeavor; in the world of business, it's absolutely vital for long term survival. The constant search for new ideas & information is what makes the successful organizations move ahead, while others who stagnate; lag far behind. Their duration for survival is usually quite brief.
Overcoming our natural obstacles to embracing change is a vital strategy; the secrets to accomplishing that are contained inside the pages of this remarkable book. Its importance can't be overstated; especially during periods of financial turmoil. As we ease out of the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression, Kegan & Lahey's guide to unlocking change could be one of the biggest keys to long-term recovery we'll come across; at a time when it's desperately needed. Wonderful Kegan and Lahey have done a wonderful job explaining the reasons we do not change, and laying out a process to help us change. We must recognize our conflicting commitments, our deep fears, before we can move in a new direction. The process is deceptably simple, and extremely effective. Using this process will help any indivdual or organization move forward.
If you get a chance to hear Kegan talk in a training, take it. He is funny and inspirational. I was lucky enough to have a workshop with him a few years ago and found the experience to be transformational. He walked us through the process described in the book. It was not only effective, it was eye-opening. I still reflect back on the conflicting commitments I uncovered when I find myself resistant to a new challenge. This process works.
Elisa Robyn, author of Pirate Wisdom Why We Don't Change and How We Truly Can Bob Kegan and Lisa Lahey are brilliant adult developmental psychologists and thinkers. This is both an extraordinary and a challenging book because it asks us to see what we do not want to see. They demonstrate how we all hold on to our current behaviors even when they're dysfunctional and destructive, because we're used to them and they make us feel safe. The consequence is what they call "immunity to change." At a practical level, Kegan and Lahey share a powerful process for unearthing how we resist even those changes we're convinced we want to make --by virtue of something they call our "competing commitments." To walk through their process, as I've done myself and in working with others, is to create more openness and less fear.
At a global level, Kegan and Lahey make a compelling case for the need to continue learning and growing and developing,internally as well as externally, throughout or adult lives. We need to see the world more openly, spaciously, richly and deeply, they say, both so we can manage our own lives better in a world of ever rising complexity, but also so we have a world worth living in to pass on to our children. What Runs Our Lives I found this book refreshing in its complexity. We are, as humans, multilayered beings, and attempts to view ourselves through an overly simplistic lens has been to our detriment.
This book helps us grapple with why we "stay in the cage" when the door is unlocked and open. The authors take on the "hidden" elements of what gets in the way of achieving goals.It is the invisible places that need the most exploration if we are to move past the stuck loyalties of our world. It is a good read both from a business perspective as well as from a personal perspective. A must for anyone who has to craft and carry out change initiatives in the workplace. Hats off for the scholarly yet very hands on work.
This book also fits well with research that shows how stress and anxiety constantly take us back to earlier survival behaviors learned in the family that reside in the limbic system of the brain and make change so difficult.
Sylvia Lafair is author of "Don't Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family patterns that Limit Success" |  |
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