The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance
Ashley Goodall
May 2024 · Hachette Audio · Narrated by Ashley Goodall
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7 hr 58 min
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About this audiobook
Revolutionize the way you see disruption and change with a groundbreaking alternative to corporate instability from a lauded HR expert.
For decades, “disruption” and “change” have been seen as essential to business growth and success. In this provocative and incisive book, Ashley Goodall argues that what has become a sacred dogma is both wrong and harmful.
Whether it’s a merger or re-org or a new office layout, change has become the ultimate easy button for leaders, who pursue it with abandon, unleashing a torrent of disruption on employees. The result is what he calls “life in the blender”—a perpetual cycle of upheaval, uncertainty, and unease.
The problem with change, Goodall argues, is that a culture where everything from people to processes to strategic priorities are constantly in flux exerts a psychological toll that undermines motivation, productivity, and quality. And yet so accustomed are we to constant churn that we have become numb to its very real consequences.
Drawing on two decades spent leading HR organizations at Deloitte and Cisco, Ashley Goodall reveals the truth about human performance and offers a radical new alternative to the constant turbulence that defines corporate life.
The Problem with Change is a clarion call to leaders everywhere: by prioritizing team cohesion (instead of reshuffling teams at will), using real words (rather than corporate-speak), by sharing secrets (not mission statements), by honoring shared rituals (rather than mandated bonding), by fixing only the things that are truly broken (instead of moving fast and breaking everything in sight), and more, leaders at every level can create the stability that people need to thrive.
For decades, “disruption” and “change” have been seen as essential to business growth and success. In this provocative and incisive book, Ashley Goodall argues that what has become a sacred dogma is both wrong and harmful.
Whether it’s a merger or re-org or a new office layout, change has become the ultimate easy button for leaders, who pursue it with abandon, unleashing a torrent of disruption on employees. The result is what he calls “life in the blender”—a perpetual cycle of upheaval, uncertainty, and unease.
The problem with change, Goodall argues, is that a culture where everything from people to processes to strategic priorities are constantly in flux exerts a psychological toll that undermines motivation, productivity, and quality. And yet so accustomed are we to constant churn that we have become numb to its very real consequences.
Drawing on two decades spent leading HR organizations at Deloitte and Cisco, Ashley Goodall reveals the truth about human performance and offers a radical new alternative to the constant turbulence that defines corporate life.
The Problem with Change is a clarion call to leaders everywhere: by prioritizing team cohesion (instead of reshuffling teams at will), using real words (rather than corporate-speak), by sharing secrets (not mission statements), by honoring shared rituals (rather than mandated bonding), by fixing only the things that are truly broken (instead of moving fast and breaking everything in sight), and more, leaders at every level can create the stability that people need to thrive.
About the author
Ashley Goodall is a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. Prior to Cisco, he spent fourteen years at Deloitte as a consultant and as the Chief Learning Officer for Leadership and Professional development.
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