How to minimize the disruption

The End of Change -- How Your Company can Sustain Growth and

Innovation while Avoiding Change Fatigue

By Peter Scott-Morgan, Erik Hoving, Henk Smit and Arnoud van der

Slot

McGraw-Hill, 2001

302 pp

US$24.95

JAKARTA (JP): Nothing is permanent but change.

As ancient as this famous quotation from Heraclitus is, it is much more applicable today in the increasingly complex business world. Dealing with, or adapting to, change is what every business organization must grapple with all the time to survive.

The End of Change, however, says there is a limit on how frequent and how fast any business organization can change. Sooner or later, managers and employees will suffer from change fatigue. Unless managed properly, change could bring disruptions to the organization's activity, resulting in dire consequences.

The book gives tips on how to minimize the disruption to your business caused by change. Stability is also important for a business to operate. At the same time, the authors also suggest that business organizations embrace change, in other words, to innovate, as and when needed.

The authors use quadrants to identify types of business to deal with change. One axis denotes the frequency of innovation and the other the level of innovation. Each quadrant is assigned a structure: a pyramid (maintains stability in an incremental innovation), a cube (maximizes periods of stability by clustering spasmodic innovations into short, efficient bursts), a cylinder (minimizes disruption by building repetitive innovation), and a sphere (reduces disruption amid incessant innovation).

The book is rather on the heavy side, with too much jargon or consultant-speak. Nevertheless, it makes good reading, particularly if you work in an organization that is constantly under pressure to change or innovate. (Endy M. Bayuni)