Synopsis

For over a decade, the experts and our own experiences have been telling us that the rate of change is increasing. A majority (55%) of respondents to the PROSCI change study reported a significant increase in the rate of change, up from 36% reporting a significant increase in 2015. The same respondents noted that change saturation is one of the top three challenges we face.

Now we are also experiencing dramatic growth in the scope of changes in our lives, work, and communities. Our traditional change tactics of detailed planning, waiting for amazing leaders, and demanding change through compulsion and threats are faltering or failing completely. The hard question we have to answer is: What else can we do?

Change Tactics: What To Try When What You've Always Done Stops Working offers clear, accessible, and implementable tactics anyone can use to bring the changes they want to their lives, their work, and their communities. Building on the firm foundation of Driving Change (choosing a change for yourself and clearing the obstacles for others to choose it to0), which replaces the increasing less effective tactic of Driving People (using coercion and threats to compel other to change), you'll find a diverse set of tactics you can use to effectively influence, lead, and manage change. Stop waiting to create the changes you want. Now--especially now--is the time to change tactics and bring the change you want into your life, work, and world.

April K. Mills is an engineer by training and change agent by passion who has invested the past twenty years in designing and implementing change acceleration tactics in her life, communities, government and industry. A Navy nuclear engineer, IT transformation leader, and globally recognized author, speaker, and blogger, April brings a fresh perspective and practical mind to the challenges of change we all face. In her conversational, supportive style she delivers easy to follow tactics that we can use today and share tomorrow with our friends, colleagues, and civic leaders.

Sales arguments

• Whether it is a foreword written by L. David Marquet, or endorsements written by Edgar Schein, Gifford Pinchot III, or William Noonan; April has shown that he work gets noticed and gets praise from thought leaders and their key disciples. She's breaking new, essential ground.
• April has worked at the forefront of change leadership for over a decade. In 2010, world change expert, John Kotter said of her work: “For someone who roams around the world and has seen hundreds of companies, universities and the government, there are some things going on [at PSNS & IMF] that are on the leading edge. If you don’t know about them, you’ve got to figure it out; find it.”
• As an altMBA alumni, April is connected to a global network of change makers who are answering Seth Godin's call to "make a ruckus." Whether in that network or through her long established blog and social media following, she is a thought-leader and community builder.
• As a woman engineer, with experience in government, military, industry, and IT and with discipline experience in project management, lean, agile, and theory of constraints, April's background speaks to change makers from a wide-range of disciplines and industries. She brings universally applicable tactics that span these diverse groups yet work in each targeted situation too.
• Unlike most business books which are written for executives; Change Tactics is for everyone. Executives who want to activate the change agency in their organizations, Civic leaders who want to empower their constituents, and individuals who want to influence their families and lives, can all benefit from reading Change Tactics and sharing it with others. This is a book best bought in large numbers to create a movement toward better, faster change.

Similar titles

• Heart of Change by John Kotter, Harvard Business Review Press, 2002. Kotter focused on bringing the emotion into change projects, what he calls "heart," and adds a new dimension to the prevailing focus on "head." . Change Tactics will also add a new dimension to change, the practical, rapid aspects in contrast to the large, over managed options.
• The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World by Ronald Heifetz, Harvard Business Press, 2009, speaks to the change, but for executives and with large plans. Change Tactics instead focuses on quick implementable techniques for all people to do right away.
• Everyone is a Change Agent by April K. Mills, 2016 Engine-for-Change Press. Change Tactics expands on the thinking first introduced in Everyone is a Change Agent, which introduces the Change Agent Essentials. Change Tactics builds on the core concept of Driving Change and gives people more choices.

Audience

For traditional audiences – executives and change leaders – these tactics will provide rapid acceleration, and for people who want to start making change happen from wherever they are these tactics will be part of their first steps toward shaping the world around them instead of just being shaped (usually negatively) by the rate and scope of changes hitting them every day.

Advance praise

Blurbs from Everyone is a Change Agent

"This book is an excellent reminder to all of us that the target of change should be what and how we do things, not individuals or groups, and that change starts with oneself." - Edgar H Schein, Professor Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management

"You will be much more successful at making things better when you understand the difference between driving people and driving change. The first creates resistance; the second invites and engages. Be effective; read this book." - Gifford Pinchot III, Chairman, Pinchot & Company, and author of Intrapraneuring - Why You Don't Have to Leave the Corporation to Become an Entrepreneur

"The greatest barrier to change is our own minds making us believe that change can't happen. April Mills dissolves the excuses, challenges our assumptions and provides a sober, yet possible path forward to change." - William Noonan, Author of Discussing the Undiscussable and student of Chris Argyris.