How do today's most outstanding executives inspire change throughout their organizations? What makes them effective leaders, driven to champion change? This compelling guide offers managers a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into real-world change strategies successfully put into practice by corporate leaders. Top management consultant David Nadler reveals the experiences and insights of the CEOs and key managers he has advised over the course of twenty years. In Champions of Change he combines their applied visions into a clear, common-sense approach to initiating, designing, and implementing organizational change. Drawing on the personal experiences he and his colleagues at Delta Consulting Group have had with companies as varied as Lucent Technologies, Sun Microsystems, Xerox Corporation, Corning, Chase Manhattan, and Kaiser Permanente, Nadler offers organizational leaders a coherent approach that has been tested, refined, and tested again in the marketplace. He candidly reveals why corporate change must be driven by top executives and vividly illustrates how they do it. In his highly readable style, Nadler presents the core principles shared by successful change managers: appropriate involvement, committed leadership, valid information, and informed choices. He clearly demonstrates how effective leaders actively involve key managers and articulate visions and goals that address the basic values and highest aspirations of people throughout the organization. Without exception, he says, they support sharing and questioning information at all levels, and act with the understanding that the best decisions emerge from full and open consideration of the widest range of alternatives. Champions of Change gives leaders and managers a new repertoire of concepts, ideas, tools, and techniques for understanding the dynamics of change and managing it within their own area of responsibility. This essential guide offers an unprecedented opportunity to learn the lessons of the "champions of change" those CEOs who lead change themselves, and then provide support for others who dare to challenge the status quo.