Book excerpt: PEOPLE IN ORGANIZATIONs of all types-public and private, large and small-have for years had to wrestle with the formidable challenge of successfully planning and implementing changes in how they do business. Today, the demand for faster approaches is increasing across a broad spectrum of organizations in business and society, as they are faced daily with an array of change mandates-new business strategy development and deployment, merger and acquisition integration, work re-design, community organizing, and more. Traditional command and control structures and processes no longer enable and mobilize people in organizations-the rapid rate of change in the environment demands new and different ways for organizations to respond. Whole-Scale Change: Unleashing the Magic in Organizations combines systems theory and practical methodology to offer a proven, flexible approach that leads to aligned action by hundreds, even thousands of people-and creates powerful processes for change. Shattering the old paradigm about how long it takes organizations to change, the book shows how to rapidly engage the whole system in meeting organizational agility and flexibility demands. It offers adaptable, repeatable strategies for different settings and convening issues through the authors' unique Whole-Scale approach-which has been successfully applied in diverse businesses and industries, the service sector, health care, education, government, other nonprofits, and communities throughout the world. Imagine everyone in your organization pulling in the same direction, everyone with the same information, acting quickly to solve the problems and confront the issues facing your organization. Whole-Scale Change provides not only the theories and principles underlying the approach, but also the practical methods, tools, and road maps for unleashing the energy and combining the power and wisdom of all the people in an organization.