Resilience and adaptability are the answer to so many things in business – and Bryan highlights their importance in leading people during change programmes in this book.
It’s quite academic in style and not as easy to read as some of the other management books I’ve read recently. The premise is to take common models of leadership and change management and blend them together to create a model that allows you to adapt change leadership to the situation you find yourself in. Leadership does affect change, so it’s an important consideration.
To be honest, the book reads like a rewrite of the author’s academic work. However, each chapter ends with key points and reflection questions, which is helpful for the practitioner. I’d say the last 40% of the book is a case study which shows how the model presented in the book is used in practice.
I put the book down not having a clear understanding of why the model was called ABChange (beyond the personal reference to her children’s names), but that’s not really important. The model itself forms the basis of the book, and helps managers think through the situation they are in, their leadership style and then the appropriate skills required in the setting along with the order in which to use those skills to create an action plan that will be effective. It’s clear that the author has put the change agent skills into practice and is passionate about the subject – and given that so much work is done as change projects these days, it is important to focus on the skills required to deliver change effectively.