Book Review: Analyzing Belasco's Teaching the Elephant to Dance

This assignment is a book review of 'Teaching the Elephant to Dance: The Manager's Guide to Empowering Change' by James A. Belasco. The review focuses on the practical aspects of change management, emphasizing the importance of leadership and employee collaboration to capitalize on opportunities. The author uses the metaphor of an elephant to describe the resistance to change in large organizations and advocates for breaking away from outdated strategies. The review highlights the importance of managers leading by example, involving employees, and adapting to changing market needs. The book is praised for its clarity and conciseness as a quick guide to change management, though it is noted that the book could have provided more depth. The review concludes that the book is a good introduction to the topic, encouraging further research for a more comprehensive understanding of change management.

Running Head: BOOK REVIEW
BOOK-REVIEW
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1BOOK REVIEW
The book ‘Teaching the Elephant to Dance: The Manager's Guide to Empowering
Change’ by James A. Belasco is a book that is focused on the very practical aspects of change
management that demands the leadership and the employees to come together to grasp each
opportunity that accompanies change and utilize them to the fullest. Effective change
management is a very important aspect that must be paid utmost attention to because staying
put on various policies and strategies that dates well back into time will show no signs of
upgrade and will harm the company. This paper will be reviewing this book in terms of
information and relevance.
Change management has been explored in countless books by countless authors
because it is very important when it comes to the management of modern day organizations,
Change is inevitable, be it in life or a job, evolution is necessary. Change equals growth in
most cases and the author makes this aspect very clear. The metaphor that he uses to explore
the status of a company is that of an elephant. Corporate giants tend to be very stubborn when
it comes to implementing change because they are afraid of the change backfiring or the
process of implementing change can be very expensive, so they try to work their way around
changing environments with the old techniques. This is in reality a poor method of
management and the author tries to coerce the reader into removing stagnate ideas that might
have proved profitable in some point.
Focus have been placed on bringing the management and employees together. He
points out that in most cases the management is the one that issues orders and does very little
in helping people execute it. According to the author that is bad management because a real
leader is not the one who sits around waiting for someone to implement the decision he or she
was a part of, a good manager is a leader who will help the employees who are the primary
executive from the very base level. The leader will be the front man in the action because it
allows them a better vantage point and boosts employee morale. He elucidates on this by

2BOOK REVIEW
using various case studies that shows the involvement of managers at a very primary level of
successful companies to help by example and advice people to lead by example.
Similar case studies are shown to show the importance of change management and the
need to grasp changes as soon as possible. He talks of companies that had failed at
understanding the need of grabbing the chances as they passed by. They had not paid
attention to the changing needs and wants of people and the threat of new competitors
entering the market and plummeted down the ladder of success. This paid heavy attention to
because of the general tendencies of the company when it comes to underestimating the risks
of not being up to date with the changes in the environment of the company.
This book it as concise as a manual. It as clarity imbibed to make it easily readable
and understood and leave little scope for doubt. It is brief, sharp and to the point but covers a
tiny aspect of the entire process. The process of change management is much bigger in nature
and it should not be ignored. Although the book has a certain crispness go it, the author’s
need to make it like a quick handbook has made the writing compromise on depth. There are
still various aspects that could have been explored, more risks could have been mentioned.
He talks about carefully planning out the processes to make sure that it does not
stumble in the middle. A sense of urgency sis to be displayed by the administration and the
same has to be communicated to the employees. Without communication, it is impossible to
loop in the employees within the process of the change. Feedback should be allowed and
decisions must take into consideration the feedback that has been received to make sure that
the employees do not feel unrelated to the work or take any offence of any kind. Leadership
and employees must go hand in hand to ensure that each company does the most together, to
ensure that the company has the most profits.

3BOOK REVIEW
In conclusion, this book is an easy guide and introduction into the world of change
management. It is concise and precise when it comes to the basic concepts of the same.
However if people need a more in depth knowledge into the situation, more books need to be
read and more research has to be done. Overall it is a very good book for some quick brush
up.

4BOOK REVIEW
References
Belasco, J. A. (2012). Teaching the elephant to dance. Crown.
References
Belasco, J. A. (2012). Teaching the elephant to dance. Crown.