Change in an Organization
To recap, change will happen, and at a dizzying rate. But what does that have to do with being a leader? There are millions of influences on organizations — global economies, human ingenuity, tastes of the public, fickle attention of the media, cultural trends, natural disasters, fads, competition, employees or volunteers, management structure, and regulation, just to name a few. Every factor breaks out into another rainbow of shifting elements, and as they move, so does the nature of your organization and what it tries to accomplish. If you are going to lead, you must grasp the nature of change in your team and organization and how to handle it.
Source of Change
First examine what exactly is changing. There might be a shift in team members, modifications of someone's responsibilities, a different location, an alteration in the nature of the organization's goals, a difference in a market, or a shift in the description of your customers.
Change can be either accidental or intentional. Other people in the organization may make decisions that force change throughout, including within your team. Such changes can be even more disruptive than anything from the outside.
There are times that the metrics you've set in place will indicate that change is in the air. Sometimes you learn of it through team members who are closer to the fluctuations than you are. Someone who constantly interacts with customers, vendors, or business partners is more likely to see the early warning signs of change than are you. Then there will be occasions that a source of change is so obvious that it's impossible to miss, like a company you are working for being acquired by another.
Good Change, Bad Change
Change isn't necessarily good or bad; it just is. We impose value judgments on change after the fact, and such judgments are relative. If a change opens possibilities and gives new ways of approaching goals, then that change is good — for the person who sees the opportunities. If change prevents someone's efforts to pursue goals, then it will seem bad. In fact, one person can see a change as positive, while a neighbor swears that it's the scourge of the earth.
Does this sound familiar? It's very similar to the topic of conflict discussed in Chapter 10. The desirability of the change all depends on where you are and what you are trying to do. Before considering how to deal with change, you must identify how it is going to affect your team and the organization. It may be that the change will open possibilities and allow new levels of efficiency. Or — and we might as well be frank about this — it could be that some genius at the top of the organization has decreed an “improvement” that is supposed to catapult the organization to new heights but in reality is more likely to drive people to find the nearest metaphorical cliff and jump.
Change Process
Since change always happens, there will be many times as a leader that you'll have to address the issue. It's best to do so in as systematic a way as possible although the particulars will always be different. Here are the basic four steps:
Become aware of change.
Plan a response.
Implement a response.
Examine the results and adjust.
Be warned that while change is almost always challenging, getting an organization to adapt as necessary is one of the most difficult tasks. In fact, major management consultancies will devote extensive study, time, and billing to what they call change management.
Change management is a large part of consultancy practice because change is so pervasive. Any time you want to improve an organization, you must alter the way it works. That means you have to institute change and find a way to keep things functioning during the process.
The process of change is not difficult to understand intellectually. Much of change, however, occurs in the realm of emotion. Most people hate change — but we'll get to that shortly.
