Change Without Pain

HR Magazine, June, 2004

Change Without Pain

By Eric Abrahamson Harvard Business School Press, 2004, 218 pages List price: $26.95, ISBN: 1-57851-827-X

Too many business books push for major, destructive changes that upend everything a business' employees know, writes Eric Abrahamson in Change Without Pain. One result is a workforce plagued by what he dubs "initiative overload," meaning employees run or resist when they see yet another management initiative coming.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Abrahamson advocates changes that avert the cynicism and anxiety bred by "change or perish" leadership fads. Abrahamson, a management professor at Columbia Business School in New York, calls his technique "creative recombination," in which companies look within for the resources to bring about change rather than destroying what they have and imposing new processes and structures.

Recombination includes:

* Cloning or adopting something (such as a computer program) that is successful in one part of the firm and simply using it as is elsewhere in the firm.

* Customizing projects so they work effectively when used elsewhere.

* Translating or reinventing elements that are useful but incompatible with new settings.

Abrahamson includes "From Ideas to Practice" sections showing techniques in action. For example, in discussing how to recombine talent, he details how "erecruiting" within a company can help employees find opportunities in-house; how networking with former employees can help track people you might like to rehire someday; and how creating spin-off businesses within a company allows those units to sell their work to other units or even to outsiders.

Change Without Pain also delves into how recombination affects:

* Corporate culture, which can't be changed quickly with a top-down initiative.

* Business structures.

* Pace.