Shaping the Future: A Dynamic Process for Creating and Achievingyour Company's Strategic Vision

When you think "change management," you probably envision a complete disruption in your business. What 21st-century progress demands is not the chaos of wholesale change but the ability to identify your organization's strategic imperative -- the fulcrum from which the power of substantial, positive action is generated. Shaping the Future presents a mix of proven methodologies, thorough research, exclusive interviews, and eye-opening examples from leading organizations, each of which embraces change as an ongoing element of growth. When an organization sets a strategic direction, execution means moving in that direction. In short, strategy is change. But why are so many change initiatives doomed to failure, to the point where "change management" has become a euphemism for nebulous, ineffectual programs? It's because most companies neglect to identify a strategic imperative. Think of a line of dominos. If you sweep your arm across the entire line, the dominos will fly hither and yon. This is what many companies try to do in creating change -- they set multiple objectives and try to hit them all at once. The result is objectives that collide with one another, sending many off in unexpected directions, leaving a few spinning wildly right where they were, and rendering one or two lost altogether.

In order for a change initiative to succeed, you've got to find your company's lead domino -- its strategic imperative. Clean execution of one objective at the beginning will make the other objectives fall neatly in a row, until all the dominos have fallen to reveal an impressive pattern of success. Shaping the Future offers a step-by-step process for determining your strategic imperative -- the focal point and originator of every element in the organization's transformation -- and laying the groundwork for a future that will flow from it. Departing from classic theories of change strategy, this book will give you profound insight. You'll also learn about the fundamental shifts that now impel businesses everywhere to create equally deep change in their basic philosophies and practices. The authors call this new reality the emerging "megadigm," and they describe six powerful forces -- from rapid technological and societal change to customers' ever-growing demand for value -- that companies must take into account. "The best practices of today," state the authors, "Are destined to become the common practices of tomorrow." Shaping the Future reveals how such practices are already in place at world leaders such as Microsoft, Boeing, Sun Micro-systems, Procter & Gamble, NEC, Wal-Mart, Quaker Oats, Harley-Davidson, and others. And it shows how your organization can -- and must -- position itself to ensure a bright future of its own design.