Monday, September 10, 2007

Breaking The Mould


By Peter Hunter



This book was recently gifted to me by my friend. He has been insisting me to read it for last three years. But, I was lazy and not interested. So, now when he just gifted to me, I was caught, I had to read it. And so I read it.

The book was about the ‘Change Management’. I have myself seen, lot of consultancy projects going on in the companies I worked for. Normally, they are at the top and middle management levels. And rarely at lower management or operator level. Above all, I never saw actual results being delivered. So, according to me all these change management drives were nothing more than lip service.

With these preconceived notions, under compulsion I picked up this book. But, there was one relief, very small size of the book. So, I started reading. And found its about oil rigs. Now, oil rigs are greek to me. Still, I carried on. And after 20 pages, my interest started building up. Though I was not able to visualize the exact actions going on the rig, but I could very well correlate the attitude and feelings of human beings with the operators in the production department, where I worked.

I carried on. There was one story, then there was another. In each story, there was one technique of change management was described. It was all beautiful and vivid description.

The best part about the stories I liked was the actual results the methodology delilvered and these were the real life stories, not the cooked one’s.

At the end of the book, I was just wondering that ‘Why I didn’t read this book 3 years ago?’ I am sure, had I read it three years ago, it would have helped me and the environment around me in a substantial manner. After I read it, I just called my friend who gifted the copy to me, and apologized for not taking his advice and reading it since last 3 years.

Now, I recommend this book, to all the professionals(irrespective of the field), who want to make the working environment around them to be more conducive and efficient. And if you don’t read this book now, and do read it later on, and you remember my advice, then do mail me and apologize :)

No comments: