Change

A letter from the publisher, Vivek Singhal, Technology Partner

For business, change is a fact of life. As technological advances bring us greater connectivity and increased communications, it is the rate of change that has become the phenomenon requiring focus and management.

As external market and economic pressures bombard your organization, it would seem that more organizations have found themselves in the “business of change.” Yet most of us do not see ourselves in this light. “I’m not in the ‘business of change,”‘ you might tell me, “I am in manufacturing!” In practice, however, it is a different story. We, as business leaders, find ourselves changing so much and so frequently that we often fail to see the effect our change has had on the organization before we impart a new one.

To prosper, business leadership needs to be cognizant of what change will ultimately mean to his or her organization. Will implementing a new technology bring a boon to productivity as touted? Or will it merely be part of another disappointing program to be replaced tomorrow by another? We need to remind ourselves that past failures will have an effect on the future success of change initiatives. Your employees have heard it before and tried it before and they can tell you, “Yeah, it’s just another program to do the same wrong things differently.” How will you make sure this time is different?

How is it that we come to manage change? Can it be managed? Or is implementation of change merely a means of coping? Faced with these questions, maybe we should start by considering the rate at which we expect our organization to change, and what kind of a culture would foster and adapt rapid changes in processes and practices.

Sometimes leadership needs to stop. Stop and look at what good, if any, has come of the change they have initiated throughout their organization. And they need to listen. Listen to what those within their organization who have had to deal with the change are saying.

Stop, look, and listen. Seems like something we were told to do years ago before crossing the street. Could managing change be that simple?

If it is, then why aren’t most of us more successful at it?

In Getting Results from Change Initiatives, we take a look at the role change plays in business and attempts to provide a check-list you can use to help maximize your potential for success in your role as change leader.