What Works : A Decade of Change at Champion International

Once upon a time, Champion International, one of the largest players in the highly competitive paper products industry, struggled with a below average physical plant, a traditionally managed workforce, adversarial union relations, and a reputation for poor financial performance. Over a period of ten years while another industry player, Scott Paper, was being shred apart by Al "Chainsaw" Dunlap Champion transformed itself into a Wall Street winner with exemplary employee practices. How did one company survive and thrive where another disintegrated?Despite the rags to riches results, there was no magic behind Champion s success. Theirs is not a story of one man s heroic triumph or the application of quick fixes or fads. Champion prevailed through an unwavering company wide commitment to sustained, progressive change in the face of considerable criticism and setbacks. In What Works, three change leaders who saw the process through give a candid account of the corporation s experiences that will help executives and managers everywhere understand the complexities of large scale change.Unlike other top down, executive led transformations, Champion s comeback began with reform on the shop floor and grew over time to include every level of the hierarchy and every business activity. It matched major technological investments with a guiding sense of social values for a broad based transfiguration that remained both profitable and humane.The authors writing with the perspective and authority their insider s positions afford them detail how Champion managed its sweeping change effort, analyze its enormous success, and provide a set of principles that people at all organizational levels can apply to their own attempts to lead and manage change.