Excerpt: Human Resource Management, University of Michigan, School of Business, "If Change Is Your Agenda, These Few Books Are 'Must Haves," Fall 2001, Vol. 40, No. 3, Pp 275-286© 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

"Dr. Bishop's Book, 'Making Change Happen One Person at a Time,' is one of the top ten books on change in the last 40 years." Dale G. Lake

Introduction
In a series of studies during the past 15 years, Dave Ulrich, Wayne Brockbank, Ar-thur Yueng, and Dale Lake surveyed more than 16,000 leaders in 29 different countries and discovered that roughly 45% of the difference between high performing professionals and their moderate performing counterparts could be explained by how well the professional managed and helped others to manage change. Subsequent surveys have supported this finding.

Indeed, in the last five years with major consolidations of whole indus-tries (food, entertainment, finance) and the emergence, diminution, and resurgence of e-commerce, the demands for help with change have multiplied. Change as a topic of inquiry and discussion has been undergoing its own revolution until today it ranks only slightly behind leadership in a number of publications on the topic.

If you want to be more precise about how individual differences will impact the success or failure of change, you will find help as a change agent in a book reviewed previously, Making Change Happen One Person at a Time (New York: Amacom, 2000).

In this book, Charles H. Bishop has carved out an interesting niche in the scope of change by focusing on how to pinpoint and develop the people best able to plan, direct, and achieve crucial changes, and how to gauge whether a department or the entire company is ready to support their efforts. Aimed at evaluating individuals be-yond their job performance and history, the process begins by applying a unique "personal change capacity" model.

Before assigning new or expanded responsibilities in changing environments, managers can learn precisely how to determine whether their people are ready to face the job. Bishop's approach identifies the following players:

• A-Players not only embrace change but also drive it, taking on problems as challenges.
• B-players happily support change and will work to advance it with direction.
• C-players are solid performers but wary of trying new approaches.
• D-players are change resisters of the first rank, and often sabotage change efforts.

Bennis, Warren, Benne, Ken, & Chin, Robert. The Planning of Change. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1961. Bridges, William, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1980. Johnson, Spencer, Who Moved My Cheese? New York: Putnam, 1998. Katzenbach, Jon R. (Ed.), The Work of Teams. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review, 1998.