Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
-44% $19.49$19.49
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$12.00$12.00
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Hovercrafts
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
Audible sample Sample
Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Leadership for the Common Good) Hardcover – January 13, 2009
Purchase options and add-ons
Unlock your potential and finally move forward.
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.
- Print length340 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarvard Business Review Press
- Publication dateJanuary 13, 2009
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- ISBN-109781422117361
- ISBN-13978-1422117361
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, coauthors of How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work, have been research and practice collaborators for twenty-five years. Kegan is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. Lahey is the Associate Director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group and a founding principal of Minds at Work, a leadership-learning professional services firm.
Product details
- ASIN : 1422117367
- Publisher : Harvard Business Review Press; 1st edition (January 13, 2009)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 340 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781422117361
- ISBN-13 : 978-1422117361
- Item Weight : 1.62 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #21,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #165 in Business Processes & Infrastructure
- #411 in Leadership & Motivation
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Dr. Robert Kegan is the Meehan Professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. The recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, his thirty years of research and writing on adult development have contributed to the recognition that ongoing psychological development after adolescence is at once possible and necessary to meet the demands of modern life. His seminal books, The Evolving Self and In Over Our Heads, have been published in several languages throughout the world. Dr. Lisa Lahey leads the Personal Mastery component of a path-breaking new doctoral program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, designed to produce the public-sector equivalent of the “turnaround specialist.” A developmental psychologist and educator, and coauthor of Change Leadership, she led the research team that created the developmental diagnostic, now used around the world, for assessing adult meaning-systems.
Dr. Lisa Lahey leads the Personal Mastery component of a path-breaking new doctoral program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, designed to produce the public-sector equivalent of the “turnaround specialist.” A developmental psychologist and educator, and coauthor of Change Leadership, she led the research team that created the developmental diagnostic, now used around the world, for assessing adult meaning-systems.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
The process they illustrate shows why change is difficult for many. One reason is that there's a distinction that many of us are blind to, namely between change that could be easy--- a technical challenge--- and an adaptive challenge which is resistive to change. Treating an adaptive challenge as if it were a technical challenge leads, if at all to change, then to change we don't sustain. The distinction is so clear, that once we see it, we don't make that mistake again.
It could be said that we must first see ourselves as we are before we can become as we want to be. It is so darn difficult to see ourselves clearly, and that's another reason change is so challenging. The Immunity to Change to the rescue! That's precisely the gift Kegan and Lahey give us through their mind-mapping process. In regard to our improvement goal we see ourselves exactly as we are. It gives us a real and honest starting point. It's a point of power.
What we see once the fog lifts (substitute team for we or I, because this can be done with individuals or teams) is that we have competing or hidden commitments that act as a brake to any improvement goal we haven't been able to attain. The Immunity to Change shows us how to surface those hidden commitments. We get to see that we actually have one foot on the accelerator (our improvement goal) and one on the brakes (our hidden but competing commitments). We are guaranteed to not succeed. Or if we succeed, for example, with our goal to delegate more, then three weeks later we're doing it all by ourselves again! It's maddening!
But once we see it, we are no longer powerless. And we get to see it quickly, because the process outlined in the book is exquisitely designed and the culmination of 20 plus years of honing. A masterful dancer makes the dance look effortless. The mind-mapping process is a masterful dance.
What we get to see in a step-by-step, organized fashion is that our goal- impeding actions make perfect sense in the paradigm we are presently inhabiting. So instead of attacking the actions, which is where we go in our first knee-jerk reaction (after all, they're impeding the path to goal!), we get to examine from a safe distance the thinking that generated the actions, the thinking that makes those actions "the only way to go." Once exposed we're ready to generate the big assumptions that give rise to our hidden commitments, and we get to design some safe, modest tests to see if those assumptions are really true or bogus.
What's fascinating and delightful is that in this process people generate their own data one small, sweet step at a time. They own the data. Because the mind-map is exquisitely designed, the persons generating the data come up with high quality data that surprises even them. And they have it in black and white, so to speak. As a coach, consultant, or leader, we all know the value of great data which the client or team member "owns." Enough said!
If I only had one paragraph I could write about this book it would be this: The Immunity to Change illuminates our resistance to change and gives us a clear and simple pathway to give it up. Fueled by powerful insights we generate ourselves and that permit us to challenge the reality we've constructed, we can create a new reality based on expanded thinking. Kegan and Lahey are experts on adult development . They reject the unexamined assumption that people don't or can't change much after adolescence. They share Einstein's assertion that we can't solve problems at the level of thinking that created them in the first place. And they help us to move from mind-sets we can't afford (a socialized mind-set) to higher levels of thinking that depend on self-observation and the lessons we learn from it. Everyone who wants to change what they never could change before, or leaders who see themselves as catalysts for change will use this book again and again. Or they'll attend workshops or contract for services
At the risk of being overly reductive, I will try to summarize the theory.
People deal with fear and anxiety as a normal part of life. They don't feel this fear most of the time because they have created effective internal anxiety management systems. Those frameworks for evaluating experience are beneficial and necessary but can also form a hidden barrier to the desire to achieve adaptive change. The development of a more complex mental framework (the "self-transforming mind") help the individual recognize the filtering effect and limitations of his/her own frame of reference. This recognition will allow the individual to begin to negate the effects of an internally imposed change immunity.
Looked at this way, any change which is adaptive rather than technical will, as a matter of course, put at risk "a way of knowing the world that also serves as a way of managing a persistent, fundemental anxiety." The authors argue that we can only succeed with adaptive changes by recognizing the seriousness of the internal challenge we face. The desired change can put at risk "what has been a very well-functioning way of taking care of ourselves."
This all begins to explain why diets fail, smokers continue their habit in the face of a life threatening diagnosis or a manager does not increase flexibility even if his/her job depends on so doing.
If the authors are wrong, reading this book may add unnecessary complexity to our efforts to affect the change process. If they are correct, however, they are providing the beginnings of a critical understanding of the barriers to fundemental change as well as a methodology both to detect and resolve the problem.
Many business books present somewhat simplistic reformulations of problems with which managers have long wrestled. This book, on the other hand, offers a complex psychological and epistemological methodology to detect the seemingly insurmountable barrier to individual and organizational change. I found the arguments insightful and compelling but think it unlikely I could apply the approach suggested in section 3 without the assistance of a professional coach. Given that caveat, if the outputs can be as significant as the authors suggest, it would be worth the cost and the effort.
I have been working in leadership development and executive coaching for over 20 years and I have seen, first hand, how difficult it is to change a behavior and sustain the change over time. Ever try losing weight and then keeping off the weight, making a New Year’s resolution for some important change and then by April forgetting you made the resolution, or how about ending procrastination.
ITC is a process and an approach that can help people: First, understand why change is so hard and how we keep getting in our own way even when we have the best intentions. Second, once we can see this, we can take the next step toward creating sustainable change by identifying the beliefs and assumptions that keep getting in the way of achieving our desired change. Then we can create an experience to test our worldview to see if our assumptions and/or beliefs are true. It isn’t easy, it will take time, and it is a perfectly normal part of the process of development.
This book is an excellent resource and should be on the shelf of anyone in leadership development or executive coaching.
Top reviews from other countries
Es zeigt Beispiele auf, die jedem in den heutigen Unternehmen bereits begegnet sind, wenn man sie nicht selbst erfahren hat.
Und es gibt einem Werkzeuge an die Hand, um aktiv den Wandel voranzutreiben.
Ich kann dieses Buch nur empfehlen. Vielen Dank Robert Kegan für die Mühe uns diesen Weg transparent zu machen.