Terms of Engagement: New Ways of Leading and Changing Organizations. 2nd Edition
By Richard H. Axelrod
Barrett-Koehler Publishers; $29.95 (U.S.)

Consultant Richard Axelrod says the idea for his book, now newly launched as a second edition, was to provide line managers with a guidebook for implementing organizational change. Axelrod focuses on four core principles and three practices that enable leaders to build strong employee commitment to change efforts. He shows how the old change management model actually discourages engagement.

Axelrod first destroys six common change management myths and then shows leaders how to involve everyone in an organization-not just select committees or working groups – in designing change efforts. He offers strategies for creating connections between people at all levels and building communities within the organization enthusiastically engaged in fostering change.  Underpinning all these efforts, he insists, must be a fundamental and transparent commitment to fairness in planning, implementation and outcome.

This revised edition features many new interviews and three new chapters. It includes a summary of recent findings in neuroscience that support Axelrod’s change model, and advice on how you can encourage engagement through everyday conversations, staff meetings, and work design.

Click here for more information (Axelrod speaks in a brief video on the book), or to order the book.