Managing Change

Change is the only constant. Sounds like an oxymoron, but guess it is true. Things change, people change, situations change, circumstances change, cities change, lifestyles change and what not? Everything changes and that makes life challenging.

Change is not always taken well. Mostly because it means it will affect your way of life in some way or the other. New power plant projects are opposed on the pretext of environmental changes, infrastructure developmental projects are opposed on the pretext of convenience changes, leadership changes are generally taken with a lot of apprehensions, organization changes are taken with lot of skepticism and so on.

Talking about organizational change, it usually happens because of two reasons. It can be because the organization has changed its strategy and policies or because the top leadership or management has changed. In the former case, the people end up doing different things, and in the latter case, people in the organization have to do the same things differently. Which one is difficult? I have had the opportunity to witness big and significant “changes” of both types and let me answer it from my experience.

In the first case, when the strategy and vision changes, the priority and the focus can change to something drastically different. Something totally tangential may be needed to be implemented. Though this is in itself not so bad; but considering the fact that implementing it and executing the new changes might be very difficult, is the root of the problem. And this becomes even more excruciating if the company keeps changing its strategy every two yrs, so that priorities keep changing and there isn’t time for people to drive that change and wait to see the results of it. A simple change in focus from product quality to customer satisfaction, in a large company can make the life of a lot of people at the execution level miserable.

In the second case, when the leader at the top changes, the leadership team also almost often changes. This brings in changes in the way things are done. More often than not, the strategy and vision of the organization may not change, but only the way in which it is achieved may change. This doesn’t require doing something altogether different, but only do things in a different way. There will be some changes in the priorities as well with a leadership change, but those changes will rather be minimal and inconsequential in magnitude at times.

I personally feel that coping up with the first type of change is more difficult than the second type, mainly because the first type requires a change in the mindset and exemplary execution skills. Unless you are yourself convinced about the change, you cannot implement the change.