Rocking the Boat: How to Effect Change Without Making Trouble describes research findings concerning the strategies that managers use to create bottom up, incremental change from within their organizations. Bottom up, or “continuous and fragmented change” as Myerson characterizes it, effected by “tempered radicals” from deep within the organization is contrasted to the “revolutionary, episodic change” that “you read about in best-selling management texts.” The author describes six strategies that tempered radicals use:
- Resisting quietly and staying true to self
- Turning personal threats into opportunities
- Broadening the impact through negotiation
- Leveraging small wins
- Organizing collective action
While the author’s research focused on social change: socially responsibility, gender, race and sexual preference equality, the change strategies and underlying mechanisms are very applicable to other kinds of organizational change including systems, people, infrastructure, and process change.
In particular, Turning Personal Threats into Opportunities, Broadening the Impact through Negotiation, and Leveraging Small Wins chapters contain a wealth of specific, practical ideas that managers can apply immediately and easily to effecting any kind of change. The author also summarizes the key elements of the strategies and the tools in tables that make excellent reference tools.
Rocking the Boat: How to Effect Change Without Making Trouble
Debra E. Myerson
Harvard Business Press
2001, 2008