The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations

This iks a book recommended by the boss to better coop people into helping with the change process. Change is hard and having as much knowledge to overcome resistance is always helpful.

This book consists of about 400 individual stories that all have a common theme of change as you can tell from the title of the book. The majority of the stories deal with organizational change and the proper steps a person should take to bring about a change in their own lives and the lives of others. The book is a very easy read and I rarely found myself becoming bored with it. The main reason for this is because the book is composed of many real life examples of how people changed their lives.

The book is based on the theory that by following eight steps major change can be brought about in a person's life. Every step gets its own chapter with different stories relating to the theme of the chapter. Many of the stories start off with a paragraph introducing the scenario and giving some background on the story that you are about to read. The story itself is usually about a page or two in length and then following the story there are a few bulleted points or notes on how people brought about change within the story. The bulleted points sometimes show the things that were done right and sometimes the things that need to be improved upon.

Overall the book does a very good job of getting its message across. Even if you do not fully understand the stories the summaries at the end make it very easy to see the message that is trying to be conveyed. By reading the stories presented in every chapter you get a better sense of how these ideas are actually supposed to be implemented. It is not just getting a solution from a textbook implementing it and that is the end of it. The people in the stories find a solution to their problem implement it and then tweak it to make it work for them.

What I learned from this book is that there is no sure method set in stone to getting your employees to be more productive. It takes a good leader that is able to listen and adapt to what his employees need in order for them to be more productive. In many of these stories the employers tried to do it their way first and failed miserably. Once they allowed the employees to have input and gave the employees incentive to get involved the change the company needed came about. Another thing I learned about organization from this book is that in order to ensure proper change is brought about the employer must ensure that they follow up after they have implemented their plan for change and ensure that it sticks.

This book has a lot to offer for a person or business that wants to bring about great change in their life. By following the steps in the book the people in the stories manage to change their lives for the better. I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking to do the same in their own life.
Written by Tyler Grillo

Excellent book, easy to read, understand and follow the steps. The examples are so plentiful and so easy to moldable to one's own challenges. I would suggest this read to anyone, employees and CEOs alike, that wants to make a change in their organization or in their life.

Your heart allows you to thrive...right? So a book entitled "The Heart of Change" probably should show signs of life! And that it did! I felt that this book was very well written and offered some life-changing information! The real-life stories only encouraged the reader to pursue more and more of what we all want. And that is to FEEL in our HEART that what we are doing is WORTHWHILE and PURPOSEFUL! Page 11 and it's diagram of the concept of See-Feel-Change is terrific! Terrific, not only because it matched the content, but because it met the visual reader as well as the logical reader as well as the emotional reader. The script them backed up it's information with the 8 stages of successful large-scale change. This worked becuase we all know that you usually experience individual/personal change amidst a bigger/greater change! Page 78 and 79 with the story of "the body in the living room" was more than real and humbling, while the story on page 50 about the boat capsizing and the need for "trust" through a change was priceless!
I would recommend this book for those in the educational realm as well as the business world, and even those just pursuing change for their own personal life! As John Kotter said, if we see it and feel it, we will desire the change!

A very well written book on how to lead change in your organization (or family) taking into account how others will react.