Listen to this book at your own risk. It contains ideas that may lead to a profound self-awakening. An introspective journey for those in the trenches of today's modern organizations, Deep Change is a survival manual for finding our own internal leadership power. By helping us learn new ways of thinking and behaving, it shows how we can transform ourselves from victims to powerful agents of change. And for anyone who yearns to be an internally driven leader, to motivate the people around them, and return to a satisfying work life, Deep Change holds the key.

Listening Length

6 hours and 2 minutes
Author

Robert E. Quinn
Narrator

Rowell Gormon
Audible release date

July 9 2020
Language

English
Publisher

Gildan Media
ASIN

B08BJDMNVC
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
See all details

1 credit a month good for any title of your choice, yours to keep.
The Plus Catalogue—listen all you want to thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts, and audiobooks.
Access to exclusive member-only sales, as well as 30% off your purchases of any additional titles.
After 30 days Audible is $14.95/month + applicable taxes. Renews automatically.

Learn more about membership

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

List Price: $22.51

You Save: $2.81 (12%)

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

Related to this topic

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

Pieces of Her
Karin Slaughter
11,941
in Suspense

Audible Audiobook
Spare
Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex
56,263
in English History

Audible Audiobook
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
James Clear
124,442
in Personal Transformation in Self-Help

Audible Audiobook
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Book 1
J.K. Rowling
75,312
in Children's Books on School

Audible Audiobook
Never Finished: Unshackle Your Mind and Win the War Within
David Goggins
4,020
Audible Audiobook

Product details

Listening Length	6 hours and 2 minutes
Author	Robert E. Quinn
Narrator	Rowell Gormon
Audible.ca Release Date	July 09 2020
Publisher	Gildan Media
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B08BJDMNVC
Best Sellers Rank	#121,202 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #311 in Organizational Change (Books) #968 in Workplace & Organizational Behaviour #1,363 in Organizational Behaviour (Books)

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

215 global ratings

5 star		70%
4 star		15%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		5%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

JANICE L GOLDMINTZ

If you have any question on the impact of change, this will bring clarity

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 30, 2013

Verified Purchase

This book will spur you to really look at your life, both personally and professionally. It is clear and concise, and brings home how each of us can direct the path of our own life and the effect that has on others. I read this book for the first time almost ten years ago, and now re-reading it, it reminds me of is still available for me to do to take life to the next level. I highly recommend this book!

Helpful

Ryan Eric Jones

It's not yoy

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 24, 2021

Verified Purchase

My girlfriend can't read this without getting upset.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 5, 2016

Verified Purchase

Great

Helpful

Robert Morris

Tick...Tock...Tick...Tock

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on November 22, 2000

By chance rather than by choice, I read this book before reading others previously or subsequently written by Quinn. Deep Change provides an appropriate introduction to any one of them. I value his books so highly because they make substantial contributions to our understanding of HOW to achieve and then sustain meaningful change, both in our personal lives and in our organizations.
According to Quinn, "Incremental change is usually the result of a rational analysis and planning process. There is a desired goal with a specific set of steps for reaching it. Incremental change is usually limited in scope and often reversible. If the change does not work out, we can always return to the bold way. Incremental change usually does not disrupt our past patterns -- it is an extension of the past. Most important, during incremental change, we feel we are in control." Does all this sound familiar? Has Quinn described accurately how change occurs within your organization?
Now consider a second brief excerpt: "This book explores a much more difficult change process, the process of deep change. Deep change differs from incremental change in that it requires new ways of thinking and behaving. It is change that is major in scope, discontinuous with the past and generally irreversible. The deep change effort distorts existing patterns of action and involves taking risks. Deep change means surrendering control." Decades ago, David Riesman made the helpful distinction between "inner-directed" and "other-directed" people. The same can also be said of organizations (communities of people) when determining the nature, extent, and location of control. Quinn believes that "one person can change the larger system or organization in which he or she exists." If I understand Quinn correctly, his central assertion is this: If and only if enough individuals achieve deep change individually can their shared organization then achieve deep change.
This is a very dangerous concept. Unlike incremental change, deep change poses a very serious threat to the status quo of an organization and, especially, to those who (you can be certain) will steadfastly defend it. There will also be perils for those who seek to achieve deep change in their individual lives. Cherished assumptions, premises, values, and beliefs will all be called into question and many of them will be found inadequate, if not false. As Quinn describes it, those undergoing deep change will feel as if they are "walking naked into the land of uncertainty." He acknowledges "This is usually a terrifying choice, often involving a ' dark night of the soul.'" In Riesman's view, that person becomes inner-directed. For Quinn, that person is "internally driven...more capable of leading under conditions of continuous change...more organic."
What is the alternative? Quinn's answer: "slow death." I am reminded of a relevant insight expressed by Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death. He acknowledges that no one can deny physical death but there is another death which anyone can deny: the death which occurs when we become wholly preoccupied with fulfilling others' expectations of us. A slow death indeed. If you wish to achieve deep change in your life, and are now involved in an organization which can only tolerate incremental change (if any change at all), I urge you to find another organization.

Helpful

Kyle Lassiter

Change, die or exist

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on March 24, 2004

Organizations and people adapt to their environments and change, or they die or they merely exist.(become the walking dead in Quinn's words) However, there are times when something more than evolution is needed and that revolution is called "deep change". Quinn outlines why so many people in so many organizations see the need for change, but the leaders just talk or say, "I told them to change" and the followers wonder why nothing ever happens. Quinn offers explanations for why the change frequently does not take place and then gives examples of how it can and has happened in other places.
He gives us hope that perhaps things can change. In any case he helps us to learn to be the transformational leader, if we look inside and if we are willing to face the pain of change.
Another reviewer pans Quinn for concentrating on the pain of change, but I have seen few people change without pain of some sort motivating them and even fewer organizations. I am a life coach and therapist and helping people change is my business, but there usually is a motivator for the change and with most people and organizations it is pain of some sort.
This book, while not a difficult read causes thought and is therefore a great read. Highly recommended. Thank you Dr. Quinn for being real with us.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Stephen B White

If you are interested in change, you must read this book.

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 9, 2001

This book offers great insights into change and cognitive mapping, and it offers great teaching stories, for example:
"Karl Weick tells a story about a military unit that was operating under difficult circumstances in the Alps during Word War II. The commanding officer had sent a reconnaissance squad to scout out the surrounding area. A day passed, and the squad had not returned. It was feared that it was lost. Three days later, to everyone's relief, the squad returned. It had become lost and very discouraged when one of the men remembered that he had a map in his pack. This discovery brought a surge of hope and renewed energy. The squad leader took the map and led the squad safely back. The story was recounted to the relieved commanding officer, who summoned the squad leader to his tent and commended him for his fine work. It was not until later that the commanding officer noticed the map and realized that it was not a map of the Alps at all but one of the Pyrenees.
"Weick points out that a good outcome can result from a flawed map. In this case, the map was a symbol that raised hope and energy. It allowed the squad leader to organize his men and get them to believe in a common strategy of action. The fact that the squad was again moving allowed the men to begin to calculate and think about where they were going. Even though their basic assumptions were wrong, the process of acting and calculating allowed them to learn and resolve their problem.
"Deep change works in a similar way. Once we have our sense of direction, we need to get organized, pack our gear, get motivated, and move on out. This process introduces new information and allows us to make choices and progress and grow our way forward. The process also transmits signals to others, and they are attracted by courage and motivation."
If you are interested in change, you must read this book.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Simon Osborne

Challenging - but in a good way

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 10, 2012

Verified Purchase

I doubt many will come across this book simply perusing Amazon for books on change. I suggest this book will be found by individuals on their own personal change journey, lead to it by some obscure thread, in their search for a philosophy that provides an alternative from mainstream change literature. The book really delivers in this respect; it does so by asking difficult and personal questions. And it needs reading several times, not least, as the first time can be quite painful.

The concept of slow death at work, frustrations and desire for flight identified in the book has been covered before but not with such intelligence or the delicate encouragement that asks what it is you need to do for deep change to occur, before looking externally to blame, criticise or the eternal wait for leadership from others. On an organisational level, the book articulates many common frustrations such as resistance, yet defuses them with an authoritative wisdom. The book finishes with empowerment delivering the final challenge of increasing your own sense of self-determination to deliver deep change in oneself and those around you.

An excellent book on change, but one that is perhaps more for personal consumption.

2 people found this helpful

Technophobe01

Highly Recommended

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

"Deep Change" is a book I have added to my recommended reading list.

Interestingly this is not an authoritative guide to better management or special actions; rather a guide that pushes the reader to become self-aware of one's situation within the context of business.

Why then the high recommendation?

In my opinion, this is one of the best books I have encountered. Why? Becuase it takes the simple premise that one must change yourself to change a company and details the implications of that change in perspective in beautiful and exacting detail.

Let me explain my position through the use of a book quote:

"If you perform beyond the norms, you disrupt all the existing control systems. Those systems will then alter and begin to work to routinize your efforts. That is, the systems will adjust and try to make you normal. The way to achieve and maintain excellence is to deviate from the norm. You become excellent because you are doing things normal people do not want to do. You become excellent by choosing a path that is risky and painful, a path that is not appealing to others."

The above made the book worth reading for me.

Thus, Robert Quinn (for me at least) has captured the inherent conflict of business change in the above quote. A key tenet of management is self-awareness of yourself, your team and the hurdles that you will encounter. One hurdle that is oft forgotten is the ability of an organisation to normalise an individual's actions. The book provides great insight in this context and has an excellent list of book references that I am working my way through.

6 people found this helpful

P. S

Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 18, 2015

Verified Purchase

This book was recommended to me by a very successful business executive who said it changed his life. I found it very inspiring, as the concepts apply not just to business but to all areas of life. Everyone can identify some aspect of his or her life that lacks sufficient meaning, an area where a “deep change” is probably needed. Unfortunately, change is hard for most of us, a challenge that only increases with age. Incremental changes along the way are possible, even welcomed. But “deep change” is very difficult, and requires a bit of a leap of faith, as the destination is not always visible. Quinn’s book helps the reader get more comfortable with the notion of walking “naked into the land of uncertainty.” One of my favorite passages is one about an executive, Bill, whose drive to success led to an unhealthy lifestyle of long hours and poor physical health. Many of us can relate to trying to solve problems by working harder. Quinn, however, highlights that such a response ultimately saps one’s vitality, leading to a drop in performance – the opposite of the intended effect. Quinn concludes that monitoring one’s vitality is critical to avoiding the journey toward slow death. Though the book came out in the 1990s, the lessons within it are still very relevant today. By forcing ourselves to answer uncomfortable questions (“How can I increase my own sense of meaning? Howe can I increase my impact?), we create an empowering environment where we have the courage to listen to our inner voice and take risks to get to the next level.

5 people found this helpful

Some Guy

Well Written and Very Appropriate

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 6, 2012

Verified Purchase

Deep Change is not to be classified in the pile of cliche'd "self-help" books. This is something more. Written college professor/consultant Robert Quinn, the foundations of this book are based on research, coupled with good insights from the author.

Stagnation runs rampant. We become enveloped in repetition . . . repetition that is poisoning us. So why not change it? Because people fear change. They fear it because it is risky. What this book does is take the reader through the process of change and not just simply developing or dropping habits. This is a deep change, to the person's very core. It is life-changing.

This book is written with business in mind but it is applicable on a personal level as well as a professional level. You do not have to be top management to invoke change. Bringing about the change that you want to see is an internal process. Change within to change without (which can be an unpopular notion as people look to external forces for safety and indicators). But true change in your work and in your life does not come from taking the safe road.

This is a great book for your own development or even for those who follow the transformational leadership research. Though it has a somewhat academic tone, it is a relaxed one and the book is easy to read (it doesn't read like a textbook or anything). Check it out.

2 people found this helpful

Bradley J. Brisco

Excellent read on real change

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 9, 2007

Verified Purchase

Quinn's purpose in writing Deep Change is to challenge the reader to recognize that everyone is a potential change agent, if they are willing to take the difficult, yet necessary steps to experience deep personal change. He lays a strong foundation by first differentiating between deep change and incremental change. There is little doubt that most change that takes place in the life of an individual is incremental. Because people are uncomfortable with major change they choose to move in small steps. The possible exception to the choice of incremental change occurs when a person is faced with a major crisis. For example, when a person experiences a heart attack, they are motivated to make deep lifestyle changes in habits such as smoking or dietary chooses. Or when a marriage is on the brink of divorce, marriage partners are motivated to make sweeping changes in how they communicate or handle conflict. However, beyond these periodic times of being motivated by crisis, people usually make changes slowly and incrementally, rather than making needed deep change.

The tendency towards incremental change over deep change is also true on an organizational level. Rarely do organizations, including the church, make deep major changes. While it may be argued that leadership needs to be mindful of bringing people along in the midst of change, there are certainly times that organizations need to experience deep change to survive. Quinn is correct in stating that without deep change, routine patterns move organizations increasingly toward decay and stagnation. This is true in the life of the church today. The church has grown comfortable with the patterns of ministry from years past and as a result has lost much of its influence in the changing culture.

One of Quinn's foundational themes is that personal deep change must precede deep change within a system or organization. While most of the time organizational change is seen as a top-down process, Quinn argues that it can also happen from the bottom-up. He states that deep change requires a personal evaluation of the ideologies that under gird the organizational culture. This is a refreshing insight that has application to other relational contexts. As people desire to see change in the lives of others, whether in parenting, marriage or work relationships, they first need to examine what changes need to occur in themselves. It is true that we do not easily recognize the part that we play in the problem. This thought is consistent with the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:3, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

Another topic that is very applicable to numerous arenas of life is Quinn's discussion of the logic of task pursuit. Most people, under the pressure of task completion, have no opportunity to consider routine maintenance. This is true in the life of the individual on multiple levels. If a person does not take time to experience physical renewal through rest and exercise the body will experience exhaustion. This is certainly true with the spiritual life as well. People need to carve out time from the pursuit of tasks to spend time alone with God. The logic of task pursuit is also true in the life of the church. Each church needs to set aside time to revisit its mission and to ensure that the work of the church is in alignment with that mission.

Other helpful insights are found in Quinn's discussion on why organizational change doesn't take place. He states that the dominant coalition in an organization is seldom interested in making deep changes. Therefore, deep change is often driven from the outside. This has been true in the life of many organizations. Furthermore, there are pressures within most organizations to conform to the prevailing structure. Quinn does an excellent job of identifying the barriers of bureaucratic culture, embedded conflict, and personal time constraints. It is helpful to recognize that in most cases people do not need new skills and competencies, but instead they need a new perspective that allows them to act as empowered leaders in a changing organization. While this section on overcoming resistance to change was helpful, it would have been strengthened with practical examples of how individuals brought about significant change.

There is also much to appreciate with Quinn's emphasis on the transitions from the technical, the transactional, and the transformational paradigms. Quinn's description of each paradigm and the paradigm's representative would prove to be very beneficial to any organizational leader's attempt to understand those that they lead and the unique perspective they hold about the organization.

Finally the culmination of Quinn's emphasis on empowerment and ultimate transformation of an organization is what he refers to as the transformational cycle. The cycle is a helpful visual reminder that deep change does not come to a point of completion. It is a cycle that will itself become routine and stagnate if there is not a time of reinvention and realignment of self and the organization.

While written from a business perspective, Deep Change is applicable for anyone who desires to bring about change within an organization. The book is structured in an easy to follow format and includes reflection and discussion questions at the end of each chapter to provide further assistance to the reader in taking steps towards deep change, on both a personal and organizational level.

3 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	Amazon Business Everything for your business	Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands

Warehouse Deals Open-Box Discounts	Whole Foods Market We Believe in Real Food	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust	Blink Smart Security for Every Home

Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Free with an Audible trial $0.00$0.00

Buy with 1-Click $19.70$19.70

Related to this topic

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Free with an Audible trial

$0.00

Buy with 1-Click

$19.70