Rating: Five out five stars

            This is one of those rare books that you must make time to read.  Creating and managing change is the essence of leadership.  This book is full of innovative ideas and deep insights to help you realize your full potential.

            The book lives up to its subtitle ‘A Definitive Guide to Reach the Next Level.’  Should you be contemplating reaching the next level, this book is a ‘must have’ resource that helps you avoid pitfalls and lays out a clear practical path.

            The innovative Theory ZYX of Successful Change Management has received wide acclaim due to its comprehensiveness, practicality, and versatility.  Nigam Arora has turned the complex process of change management from an art into a science, thereby enabling the leaders to succeed every time at one of their most difficult challenges of creating change. 

            You would expect a book on a deep subject to be dull.  To the contrary, Arora’s writing style makes this book fast paced, engaging, and entertaining.  The book clearly illustrates the theory with 94 memorable case histories.

            As a double benefit, the book is also your interactive workbook.  You will be interacting with the insights in the book and resolve to apply them to your own organization.  The book has a wide left margin to give you enough white space for making notes. At the end of most chapters the book provides several ‘Ideas in Action’ and ‘Nigam’s Laws of Change Management.’  These sections lead you to enter a ‘Contract with Yourself.’  This is the genesis of your application of the ideas to your organization with 63 diagrams and charts providing you a starting point without having to first gather a lot of data yourself.

            At the end of the book Arora includes 53 questions he used to interview a wide spectrum of leaders to refine the theory.  You have the opportunity to interview yourself and test your own experiences against Theory ZYX, thereby fully internalizing the concepts.

            Cost reduction, rapid revenue increase, accelerating innovation, new processes and systems, new market conditions, new regulations, etc. are, in reality, change initiatives.  You can significantly increase the probability of your success by conceiving and implementing such initiatives in the context of Theory ZYX.

            If you want to build a high performance nimble culture and realizable vision, this book is for you. Theory ZYX is the definitive resource that belongs on every leader’s desk.

Terry Jolliffe