Review of Belasco's 'Teaching the Elephant to Dance' - Management

This report reviews James A. Belasco's 'Teaching the Elephant to Dance: The Manager's Guide to Empowering Change,' a practical guide for managers navigating organizational change. The essay highlights the book's core message: organizations, like elephants, are slow to change, and successful leaders must foster an environment that embraces new directions and communicates a clear vision. The review discusses the use of metaphors to illustrate change management principles, emphasizing the need for long-term solutions over short-term fixes. It praises the book's hands-on approach, case studies, and focus on employee engagement. The report also points out the importance of a sense of urgency, a migration path, and reinforcing new behaviors to effectively implement change. The review concludes that the book is a valuable resource for managers seeking to establish a stronger foundation for their businesses while navigating change and prioritizing employee well-being. The book emphasizes the importance of leaders working alongside their employees to foster a culture of change and adaptability.

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‘Teaching the Elephant to Dance: The Manager's Guide to Empowering Change’ by
James A. Belasco is a book that is very practical and serves as a very hands on guide for
managers in organizations. It helps bring about effective change in an organization because it
has ideas about new directions that can be taken and the new visions that should be
communicated to help implement the change. This essay will be reviewing this book and
pointing out the various positive and negative aspects of the same.
“Organizations are like elephants-slow to change.” The book begins with this very
legitimate line by the author. It is true that changes are constant in any kind of organization.
Change is a very integral characteristic of this world. However, organizations are slow to
adapt change because of the enormous amounts of adjustments required in various sectors
after the decision is taken for the change to be implemented. Metaphors, in this book, are
used like flowcharts by the author in order to teach the chief of operations of various
organizations to create an atmosphere in the business that will help in humanizing the
boardroom.
“Trainers shackle young elephants with heavy chains to deeply embedded stakes? As
time passes, the elephant learns to stay in its place and change does not occur.” Through this
Belasco stresses on the fact that in order to survive, the corporate organizations must keep
changing and implementing changes. An organization might come up with the line “But,
we’ve always done it that way.” This line is the very warning sign about a company that is
going to go down eventually, it is a symptom that points to an impending disaster.
Organizations often shackle themselves like huge and powerful elephants in captivity. They
keep robbing themselves of their ingenuity that is very much required in order to counter
newer challenges and cope with change. It is also required that solutions are found out to help
long term solutions than just short term solutions because in that case, the process will have

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to be repeated countless times for all kinds of short term changes. An organization must focus
on long term solutions that will help them tackle changes properly and for their benefit.
This book has this characteristic of being a hands on manual for all kinds of
organizations, be it big or small, a corporate or a governmental organization, a manufacturing
based organization or even a service organization, an electronic giant or a FMCG leader.
Every kind of organization requires this handbook to effectively tackle the obstacles that
changes throw in the way of the organizations. It is filled with case studies that will
illuminate the readers about how organizations tackle the changes within. These case studies
are based on companies that are highly visible so that the readers understand them clearly.
The case study of Xerox is also present, that states that it was very successful yet came to the
brink of an enormous disaster as they refused to take Japanese competition seriously.
The information given to the CEO’s have a lot of weight and should be employed on a
regular basis. He talks about important things that have to be taken care of by these people
like the sense of urgency that is very important to make sure that the tomorrows are clearly
sketched out. He says that this has to be followed by a migration path that has to be
developed keeping in mind the direction the company wants to take. A new behavior has to
be reinforced as well to ensure that the old is left behind in the past and that they are not
dwelled upon. He talks about how the above can be implemented without destroying the
confidence of the employees in the process.
The book is a constant reminder that the employees consist of the backbone of the
organization. He focuses deeply on making sure that they are content and willing to work. He
talks about how an effective leader is not the one who keeps commanding but also the one
who works along with the employees. Like the CEO of McDonald’s, Ray Cook who went
down on his fours to help another employee clean out the trash in a shrubbery although he

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was dressed in a very expensive suit. Thus we see that this book has employed various real
life instances to reinforce the real ideas behind leadership and change management that go
hand in hand to ensure a profitable future.
In conclusion, this book is a must read for the managers and the people heading an
organization to brush up the concepts that will help establish a stronger foundation of the
business that they are trying to run profitably all the while keeping the changes and the
employees in loop. This book is a very clear and crisp manual that imbibes a feeling of high
momentum to ensure that the same is reflected in the official lives of the readers.

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