Organizational transformation and change management

"Planning as Learning,” Arie P. De Geus, Harvard Business Review, Mar-Apr 1988.

Mentor and guide to the current writers about the learning organization describes his approach to planning that he developed at Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s.

The Fifth Discipline : The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization and The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization, by Peter M. Senge (Editor), Charlotte Roberts, Rick Ross, Bryan Smith, Art Kleiner.  Doubleday, 1994.*

The bible of the learning organization.  The Fifth Discipline is the original more academically-oriented piece.  The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook has all the theory plus stories and exercises.

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by James Collins.  HarperCollins, 2001.

The current reigning bestseller on organizational change.

Leading Change by John Kotter.  Harvard Business School Press, 1996.

A highly readable, step-by-step guide to creating transformation change in organizations.

Visionary Leadership by Burt Nanus.  Jossey-Bass, 1992.

The classic statement of using visioning within a strategic planning framework.

Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras.  Harper, 1997.                      

A “search of excellence” knock-off that described companies without strong, charismatic CEOs, but rather strong cultures that lasted from one regime to another.

The Age of Heretics : Heroes, Outlaws, and the Forerunners of Corporate Change by Art Kleiner.  Doubleday, 1996.

The history and development of ideas that have changed corporations and led to the practice of corporate transformation.

Servant Leadership : A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness by Robert K. Greenleaf.  Paulist, 1983.

The classic statement that leaders (and managers) are their to help their employees be successful rather than to tell them what to do.                   

Leadership and the New Science : Learning About Organization from an Orderly Universe,                     by Margaret J. Wheatley.  Berrett-Koehler, 1994.

New ideas from chaos and complexity and their application to change in organizations—growing the new organization like an organism rather building it like a machine.