A quick Google search on “change failure” returns “about 435,000,000 results,” many of which repeat the widely accepted, some say mythical, belief that 70 percent of change initiatives fail [1]. From my own experience and perspective, change failure often boils down to two primary reasons: (1) organizations are not very good at changing, and/or (2) they often have no compelling reason to change.

This book tackles the mythical belief and both reasons head-on, providing fresh insights and detailing an innovative change competence model (CCM) that can be utilized with various change approaches, especially for what the authors call complex purposive change. I believe their claim to be true. My litmus test is itself a change failure: the demise of the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) in 2005. A forensic analysis published in 2008 indicates the need for a systemic model and holistic framework such as the one defined in this book [2].

Change competence: implementing effective change is the ninth volume in the “Routledge Studies in Organizational Change and Development” series. It is a concise 142 pages, consisting of eight chapters. The CCM is unfolded quickly in chapter 1. Chapters 2 through 6 explore change failure and success factors, leadership and change, organizational dysfunctions, and relate the CCM to various change approaches: singular, diagonal, and linear. Chapters 7 and 8 describe a two-part change management case study that demonstrates the application of the model.

The CCM itself consists of five factors: rationale, effect, focus, energy, and connection. The CCM can be thought of as a symbol of change, depicted as two intersecting figure eights: rationale and effect vertically, focus and energy horizontally, with connection in the center. It can also be considered symbolically as a formula: change competence = (rationale x effect x focus x energy) raised to the power of connection. A positive value for all the factors, especially leadership intent and action to raise the power of connection, is what increases the likelihood of success for ambitious innovation projects such as SMP.

This is a valuable, insightful book. In addition to making a contribution to the theory and practice of organizational change management (OCM), it sheds new light on what Mark Hughes of the Brighton Business School, himself an author in the aforementioned Routledge series, refers to as a mystery: “whether through change management we can manage from a known state into an unknown state” [3].