You Don't Change a Company by Memo: The Simple Truths About Managing Change

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Smye, a Toronto-based consultant and columnist for The Globe and
Mail’s “Report on Business,” has picked the topic of the ’90s
for this, her first book-length work. Change—how to implement it and
how to survive the effort—is a topic of vital interest to management
at all levels, irrespective of company size. As a result, the subject of
the book gives it lots of appeal; the title implies a promise of
something more effective than memos, perhaps practical how-to ideas or
action plans.

The subject’s great. The promise is there. But the delivery’s
rather disappointing. Smye attempts to stand out from the crowd of
change-gurus by rejecting jargon, but then proceeds to quote other
authors’ terminology and theories. She takes a facile, at times
flippant, approach to difficult business problems, tossing off
pronouncements that sound good on the surface but are not explored in
sufficient depth to be useful. In an effort to be light and bright, she
becomes superficial. The most original—and most useful —concept in
the book is the analysis of an organization going through change as
being at one of five stages: ignoring, attending, planning, executing,
or embedding.

Two bits of this book are particularly grating. There’s a “Dear Ann
Landers”-style chapter: flip answers to phony questions. Anyone still
reading on after that ordeal will find it is time for a commercial
promoting a workplace diversity game developed by Smye’s company.

The book’s a quick, light read that adds little of value to the
overflowing business bookshelf.