Erika Andersen’s background as an advisor and consultant, along with her being the founding member of the consulting firm Proteus International, gives her a sense of confidence that’s strongly evident in the book Change From The Inside Out: Making You, Your Team, and Your Organization Change-Capable. A lot of authors, even distinguished ones, can fall victim to under or over-explanation, but with a solid foundation reinforcing her beliefs Andersen never falls victim to this formula.
PROTEUS INTERNATIONAL: https://proteus-international.com/
THE PROTEUS LEADER SHOW (PODCAST) https://erikaandersen.com/podcast/
Her brand of approach to problem-solving within the workplace is deceptively simple. It’s all about mentality, creating an extensive five-part ‘change’ plan that unpacks how to effectively institute new facets within a hierarchal environment. From this simple proposal for implementation, Andersen is able to expand upon the more complex aspects of implementation effects. This covers a wide range of corporate psychology, one of the crucial tenets being what Andersen calls ‘visioning’. “All of us have it in us to be visionaries. We think it’s just a few people— Steve Jobs, say, or Nelson Mandela, or Marie Curie. But everyone has the capacity to envision futures that don’t yet exist,” she writes. “We do it starting when we’re little kids and we want a bike for our birthday or a special superhero party. We see it clearly: how it will look and feel, how our friends will react, how excited we’ll be—how the cake will taste or how the wind will feel in our face as we ride down the street on our cool new bike. This is visioning.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: https://erikaandersen.com/
From said visioning, Andersen writes, the implementation strategy she proposes can be used as a roadmap to lay the groundwork for turning said vision into an actualized reality. In short, being visionary is manufacturable. It’s an interesting flick of the ear to the idea some people achieve greatness because of innate talent. While Andersen never disputes some profiles will carry more gifted capacity than others, everyone demonstrably benefits from applying themselves to the five-part change plan. It helps translate one’s evanescent conceptual ideologies into practices others not only can see the merits of, but can believe in wholeheartedly themselves. “When you’re thinking through who will be most affected by the change, take into account the organizational parameters of systems, structure, and culture,” Andersen writes. She goes on to clarify, “You may want to ask a second question, ‘underneath’ the question I posed above, to tease out impacts you may not have recognized: Who will need to create or rely on different systems or processes, operate in a different structure, or behave in ways that will seem countercultural to them as a result of the change?”
AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1523000392/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_7BKDMKMMZ2GEK6TST809
By writing about this is a manner articulated as if such questions are simply aspects of the bastion of common sense, Andersen successfully achieves what she has set out to do. The book stays in its lane, but with a lane that can be applied across a wide spectrum one path of thought becomes many. It’s nice to see something that can be judged (positively) by its cover. Change From The Inside Out is personalized, fresh, and genuinely enjoyable in a literary sense as much as it is for its ideas.
Garth Thomas