Viral Change book review

I recently finished reading Leandro Herrero's superb book, Viral Change. I was planning to review it here on the blog, but I've just discovered that Kieron Shaw has beaten me to it! 

The good news is that Kieron's response to the book was very similar to my own - in Kieron's words, it 'rocked his world'. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's a seriously impressive book and a must-read for anyone in the business of change.

So, rather than reinventing the wheel, I suggest you check out his review in full on the Viral Change website. It will also be published in the next issue of Melcrum's SCM magazine, for those of you who subscribe.  

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Buy it now. Read it and re-read it.

As an internal communicator you'll need to take some of his comments on the chin (Leandro doesn't have many good things to say about traditional approaches to communicating change) but at the heart of it is a sensible and workable methodology for delivering real, tangible behaviour change. 

For me Viral Change is up there with John Smythe's Chief Engagement Officer as one of the most important books on employee communication, engagement and change to emerge in the last few years. 

Comments

[Sue Dewhurst]

Hi Lee,

I recently finished working on a research report for Melcrum about viral communication, which included two interviews with Leandro (conducted by Kieron, hence the book review), and was lucky enough to meet him and hear him talk about his philosophy last week.

I haven't read the book yet, but his ideas definitely give food for thought, and hearing him speak is an experience! A blend of infectious enthusiasm, inspiration and challenge, all delivered at with such energy and pace that my brain felt quite overloaded at some points. Apparently the new version of the book is out in a couple of weeks, so he told us to hold off and wait for that one. It will definitely be finding its way onto my bookshelves.

Sue

Sue

[Leandro Herrero]

Thanks very much for your kind words. Just to clarify: I have nothing against the traditional communication channels. I know many people in ‘internal coms’ doing an excellent job. But unfortunately, communication does not equal change. Coms has to be there and extract and absorb the stories within the organisation that show how new cultural/behavioural tipping points have been created. They help us amongst other things with storytelling. So the more they learn about non-conventional, informal and sometimes semi-invisible mechanisms of communication, the better. We are all in the same boat. The boat – for me – of creating environments where Monday morning suddenly sounds like a good idea….Am I enthusiastic? You bet. I am in the infections business, not even change management. I work with activists, champions, some deviants and uncomfortable people, advocates and any other employee who is willing to exercise his/her influence for a common good. It is the art of ‘designed informality’. It is conversations. Change (whatever the reason for it) is to create an internal epidemic of (whatever you want to create). It works. No epidemic, no change. Leaders better understand epidemiology, networks, social fashions and idea-contagion; forget traditional leadership a-la-business-school. Keep blogging on this. We must make everybody hooked into the traditional, mechanistic, top- down change management approach, extremely uncomfortable!

[Sue Tupling]

Dear Leandro, Your approach (and your book) is perfect for the business world today. Emergent thinking and approach is critical to adapting to the environment, and businesses that can't see this will surely die. I am definately an activist myself and i am already telling lots of people about your book! It helped me to distill and refine my own approach to helping leaders with behavioural change. I do find that they are uncomfortable with the ambiguity (to be expected of the ESTJ types predominant at the top of many of our orgs!!). But as long as they are aware of this in themselves, that's half the battle won. Coaching-type conversations, metaphor, storytelling, visual thinking and representational communication (NLP very useful here) are all very powerful tools to help with this. Thank you for your book. You might like to read my recent blog post:

http://changeworksblog.com/?p=53

warm regards
sue tupling