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For organizational and personal change to happen and be sustainable, there must first be a system of thought balanced against action. Williams and his concept of congruence provide an alternative to the often chaotic, unbalanced ways in which change is currently understood and its accomplishment attempted. He challenges the organizational model of compartmentalized structures, offers a persuasive refutation of the fashionable paradigm of organizational transformation (one based on dominance and control), and argues a provocative notion that innovation is actually the successful result of reworking what has not worked before. A new look at the processes that create organizational movement, Williams' latest book is a guide for leaders, managers, consultants, and corporate practitioners, and a new way for students, teachers, and researchers to rethink the entire change process.
Williams has found through his own experience that people focus too closely on the action behaviors of organizations and too little on the thinking behind them. The result is that gaps open up and create pitfalls in our efforts to achieve excellence in human and organizational performance. Williams suggests that organizations innovate themselves into failure. To counter this, he provides a true systemic approach to enhancing organizational performance, a system of what he visualizes as congruence, a way to fit thoughts to actions. It is as much a way of thinking, says Williams, as it is a method toward goals-goals that are clear and essential to the survival of any organization. Drawing liberally upon his own expertise as a teacher, consultant, and therapist, he helps others to appreciate the successes that can be realized when balance and the alignment of thought and action are achieved, and when the search for change becomes a planned, focused, and systemic endeavor.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction: Getting the Picture
The Destruction of Balance in Our Personal and Professional Lives and the Need for a Change
The Challenge to Think Differently: Explorations into Our Organizational Thinking and Its Impact on Our Lives
Exploring the Concept of Congruence: The Making of C6
Getting Systems Clarity in our Lives
Embracing the Art and Hope of Organizational and Professional Collaboration
Putting a Face of the Process of Congruence Development
Looking at the Business and Personal Complements That Can Anchor Us
Experiencing Our Business and Personal Creativity: The Impacts of Emerging Strategies
Understanding Professional Choice and Time: Creating Business Options
Enjoying Our Complexity and Creating a New Business Andragogy for Living
Putting it Together: The Congruence Development System and Strategies For Building Congruence
Putting the Process Together: Steps to Energize the Development of Congruence in the Workplace
Where We Go from Here: Risking Being You, All of You
Bibliography
Index
About the author
LLOYD C. WILLIAMS is an Associate Professor of Business in the Masters of Arts in Business and the Masters of Arts in Organizational Development and Transformation Programs at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. He is also President of Lloyd C. Williams & Associates, an Oakland, California, consulting firm specializing in organizational change and development with clients in the public and private sectors throughout the United States. Dr. Williams holds advanced degrees in psychology and theology, and is the author of three previous Quorum books: The Congruence of People and Organizations (1993), Organizational Violence (1994), and Human Resources in a Changing Society (1995).
