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Change Defined
"Change is the window through which the future enters your
life." It's all around you, in many types and shapes. You can bring it about
yourself or it can come in ways
Balanced Organization: 5 Basic Elements
Leadership (Fire):
Why Change Management?
You can bring the change about yourself or it can come in ways that give you
little choice about its what, when, and how. Fighting against change can
slow it down or divert it, but it won't stop it however. If you wish to
succeed in this rapidly changing new world "you must learn to look on change
as a friend - one who presents you with an opportunity for growth and
improvement."9
The rate of change in today's world is constantly increasing. Everything
that exists is getting old, wearing out and should be replaced.
"Revolutionary technologies, consolidation, well-funded new competition,
unpredictable customers, and a quickening in the pace of change hurled
unfamiliar conditions at management."7
Today's World Realities
The magnitude of today's environmental, competitive, and
global market change is unprecedented. It's a very interesting and exciting
world, but it's also volatile and chaotic:
-
Volatility describes the economy's rate
of change: extremely fast, with explosive upsurges and sudden downturns.
-
Chaos describes the direction of the
economy's changes: we're not sure exactly where we're headed, but we are
swinging between the various alternatives at a very high speed.6
To cope with an unpredictable world you must build an
enormous amount of flexibility into your organization. While you cannot
predict the future, you can get a handle on
trends, which is a way to take advantage of change and convert risks
into
opportunities.
Harnessing the
Power of
Change
One of the keys to dealing with change is understanding that
change in never over. "Change
brings opportunity to
those who can grasp it, and the discontinuities of the
new
economy offer unlimited opportunities."13

New Survival Strategies
In today's tidal wave of
global economic, technological, and social change, that name of the game
for you and your organization is survival. If you
are going to withstand relentless and constantly growing global
competition, you need to
be different and
radically change the way of doing business.
You have to give up the
old hierarchical, adversarial approach which wastes individual
talents and saps energy in unproductive conflict. Instead you need to
create a new management model,
switch
from
management to leadership, manage
change, build trust, drive
out fear of failure and and create productive
partnerships in which everyone can offer their unique knowledge and
talents. If you know how to help your organization to do this, you can
make a decisive difference.
Leadership-Management
Synergy
Leaders:
Pursue opportunities.
Managers: Reduce risk.
► Resulting synergy:
Strategic achievements...
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Inspirational Business Plan: Successful Innovation
Risk Management Strategy:
"You never change something by fighting the
existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing
model obsolete."
Buckminster Fuller...
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Evolutionary Change
vs. Revolutionary Action
How you change a business unit to adapt to shifting economy
and markets is a matter of management style. Evolutionary change, that
involves setting direction, allocating responsibilities, and establishing
reasonable timelines for achieving objectives, is relatively painless.
However, it is rarely fast enough or comprehensive enough to move ahead of
the curve in an evolving world where stakes are high, and the response time
is short. When faced with market-driven urgency, abrupt and sometimes
disruptive change, such as dramatic downsizing or reengineering, may be
required to keep the company competitive. In situations when timing is
critical to success, and companies must get more efficient and productive
rapidly, revolutionary change is demanded.
When choosing between evolutionary change and revolutionary
action, a leader must pursue a
balanced and pragmatic approach. Swinging too
far
to revolutionary extreme may create "an
organizational culture that is
so impatient, and so focused on change, that it fails to give new
initiatives and new personnel time to take root, stabilize, and grow. What's
more, it creates a high-tension environment that intimidates rather than
nurtures people, leaving them with little or no emotional investment in the
company."4
A Leader's Mood: The Dimmer Switch of
Performance
Manage the Emotions of Change. Be particularly mindful of how you
manage emotions
if your organization is undergoing change
how you handle emotions during
these crucial times can help or hinder the change process.
It's a known fact
that if the resistance to change is emotional, it is the hardest form of
resistance to overcome. As the leader handling a change initiative, don't
avoid the emotions that accompany the change process. Set the mood and
manage the emotions
or they will manage you...
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Strategies for Leading Breakthroughs
So what separates
extraordinary leaders from proponents of the status quo?
They break the rules. Except, not in an arbitrary or
capricious way. When you look at examples of extraordinary
leadership, like the Founding Fathers of the United States or
Jack Welch of
GE, certain practices or principles become apparent. To
start, there is a
declaration of what the future will be. There is also a
purpose, something to stand for. And finally, there is a clearly
articulated commitment...
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Systems
Thinking
Your should master
systems thinking if you wish to
manage change effectively. Systems thinking "focuses on the whole,
not the parts, of a complex system. It concentrates on
the interfaces and
boundaries of components, on their connections
and arrangement, on the
potential for holistic systems
to achieve
results that are greater than the sum
of the parts.
Mastering systems thinking means overcoming the major
obstacles to building the
process-managed enterprise - for every business process is a whole
system."2
Keep People In The Know
"Transformational leaders
empower others by keeping them "in the know," by keeping them
fully informed on everything that effects their jobs," says
Brian Tracy. "People want and need to feel that they are
insiders, that they are aware of everything that is going on.
There is nothing so demoralizing to a staff member than to be
kept in the dark about their work and what is going on in the
company."...
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Start
Change With Yourself...
Understanding What's Going On in the Real World...
Non-financial Barriers to Change...
A Clue to Successful
Change Management...
Change and
Leadership...
Internal and External Sources of Changes...
Anticipate Change...
Five Drivers
of Change...
Manage
Resistance to Change...
Change Management Is Not Problem
Solving...
Change
Before You Have To...
Strategic Change Management...
Viewing Your Business
with an Outsider's Eyes...
80/20 Thinking...
Create Change for Competitive Advantage...
Creating Change: Twin Strategies...
Creating Change: Steps to Establishing a New Balance...
How To Ask Searching Questions...
Lead
Change...
How To Make Big Changes...
Methods for Dealing with
Resistance to Change...
Make
Quick Decisions...
Create
Corporate Guiding Principles...
Manage
Organizational Change...
Motivate Employees to Embrace Change...
Lead
Behavioral Change...
Tips for Setting and
Communicating the Vision...
Beer's Formula for
Leading Change...
Sustainable Ability to
Change...
Real Time Business Development...
Manage Change through Projects...
Case Study
General Electric
(GE)...
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