Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Leadership for the Common Good) |  | Authors: Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 3216
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1422117367
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9781422117361
ASIN: 1422117367
Publication Date: February 15, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9781422117361 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
A recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. Desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive. Given that the status quo is so potent, how can we change ourselves and our organizations?
In Immunity to Change, authors Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey show how our individual beliefs--along with the collective mind-sets in our organizations--combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. By revealing how this mechanism holds us back, Kegan and Lahey give us the keys to unlock our potential and finally move forward. And by pinpointing and uprooting our own immunities to change, we can bring our organizations forward with us.
This persuasive and practical book, filled with hands-on diagnostics and compelling case studies, delivers the tools you need to overcome the forces of inertia and transform your life and your work.
When it comes to change, desire and motivation aren t enough. Kegan and Lahey examine why change is so hard and offer innovative, practical insight to overcome the internal and external obstacles and to meet the challenge of change. Anne Sweeney, Co-Chair, Disney Media Networks; President, Disney-ABC Television Group
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
 A unique approach to developing leaders that works! February 27, 2009
Robert Goodman
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I write this review from the perspective of an Executive Coach who has been practicing for 15 years and who has used this methodology with executives/leaders over the past three years. I can vouch that it works, not only with individual leaders but in a team development context as well. Working well means that individuals have changed behaviors; in the case of the team, that it learned to overcome difficult communication challenges resulting in a measured increase in trust among its members.
In clear language, Kegan and Lahey lay out a step by step methodology that facilitates a person's conscious understanding of his or her intentions, aspirations and goals to an identification of hidden "competing commitments", which may unintentionally hinder reaching these goals. The articulation of these competing commitments ultimately lead to an uncovering of the assumptions, beliefs and systems of meaning which can then be critically evaluated for their ability to promote or hinder success in the achievement of the goals and aspirations that anchor the process.
Their methodology helps people to reflect on themselves and their competing committments in a clear way. As an Executive Coach, I have repeatedly observed that leaders are limited most significantly by their inability to not only take the time to reflect but to know how best to use this reflection space. I also appreciate the fact that Lahey and Kegan link their methodology to a theory of development,demonstrating the process of increasing complexity of mind. This important link between practice and theory moves the user from an increase in self awareness (a very important step) to a broadening of how the leader thinks and acts.
I and my clients find their methodology very user friendly, specific and actionable. There are distinct actions one can take, experiments to design and run. It is an active process; the act of designing and running learning experiments while engaging others in the process puts the developer in the driver's seat encouraging agency and ownership for learning. Many of my clients have expressed excitement at their self generated discoveries. Other contributions: the positive frame and non-judgmental stance of their methodology bring people to their big assumptions gently, maximizing receptivity to learning and change. "Defenses" potentially can relax, respecting individual needs relative to the pace of change.
This is a very important tool for any Executive Coach's tool box, yet it is more than at tool. It is a way into developing a "bigger" world from which to lead others and that's what leaders need most.
Greater Wisdom February 28, 2009
T. Thresher (Suquamish, WA United States)
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
I am delighted to give my highest recommendation to Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey's newest book Immunity to Change. I have used their material (How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work) for nearly eight years in my capacity as a minister and in my work as a business school instructor. I have observed remarkable changes in individual lives using these tools.
Immunity to Change takes Kegan/Lahey wisdom to the next level. It elaborates and expands their tools for dealing with the invisible assumptions that run our individual lives. It clearly spells out how to create safe, effective tests of these Big Assumptions to subtly shift our foundational perspective. It then extrapolates these tools to team process to help us discover and change the Big Assumptions that stifle team productivity.
It is rare that a tool serves both spiritual development and the deepening of leadership capacity. This is one of those rare tools, expressed clearly and passionately. Buy it and enjoy.
Rev. Tom Thresher, Ph.D.
Read this book February 20, 2009
Jay R. Kaufman
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
If you are in a leadership position in any group or organization, read this book. If you care about changing or effecting change, read this book. If your new year's resolutions don't make it past January 6, or if you've given up hope that you can ever drop those bad habits or strike out into new territory, read this book. Kegan and Lahey have produced more than the long-awaited powerful analysis of what makes change so difficult. They have developed an empowering methodology for making the changes that we, our organizations, and our communities need and long for. The book is rich in examples of change - individual and organizational - in action. But more than a collection of stories, Kegan and Lahey have given us a path to change. As a stunning example of the power of change, they have reinvented and reframed their own work. Immunity to Change is an impressive step beyond their earlier collaborative work and has already advanced my own thinking, teaching, and coaching about the subject. Read this book.
Jay R. Kaufman, Director, Leadership and Public Life, Northeastern University
Insightful AND practical February 28, 2009
Mary J. Lewis (Fargo, ND United States)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
In Immunity to Change, Lahey and Kegan synthesize their years of research and connect the dots for us in a way that I was beginning to see in my own work. They demonstrate a practical approach to digging into behaviors that we want to change and have found ourselves trying over and over again to change without success. The authors bring the work of Heifetz and Linsky (Leadership without Easy Answers, 1994, and Leadership on the Line, 2002) who describe the differences between our "technical" work and our "adaptive" challenges, to a place where we as individuals and teams and as coaches and consultants can make real lasting progress. The practical application of immunity mapping helps us to discover the adaptive challenges underlying our problems and evaluate the values conflicts that stand in the way of changing our behaviors and attitudes. Our own system of meaning-making is perfectly designed to get the results we are getting...so...we need to dig into our way of making meaning before any approach to change will be successful.
They ask us to discover our big assumptions which prevent us from making progress on our individual or collective adaptive work by leading us through a four column system that they define as immunity maps. They illustrate the work with examples of individuals and teams with whom they have worked. The additive power of insight coupled with a practical plan of action to test that insight makes the iterative work of growth and development doable. This deeper way of looking at our work transforms the challenges we face as individuals and systems giving us a structured approach to our own development
This book builds upon the work of Kegan's In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life, 1994 and Lahey and Kegan's previous book, How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, 2001. The main value of this latest book, for me, is its ability to synthesize the previous work AND provide a framework for making progress on adaptive work. My work in leadership development has led me to the conclusion that our organizations need people that can exercise leadership from a more developed and broader perspective of meaning-making in order to make progress on the complex issues facing us today. Immunity to Change takes a giant step forward in helping me see how to do that work.
Simply Brilliant March 21, 2009
Stephen Mitten (White Rock B.C.)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Occasionally, there is work done that materially advances the field of human development. This work is brilliant.
I especially enjoyed their distinction between a technical and adaptive change, and the simple methodology of identifying and working on the often hidden resistance we all have to making change.
If you are interested in accelerating change in yourself, your team, or your clients, you really should be aware of Kegan and Lahey's work.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
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