Tired of Change: Change Management – Just a Meaningless Fad

“We have so many change projects that keep changing in themselves that we never seem to get to the end of anything; and that’s before we even try to do our day jobs.” Operations Manager in Financial Services

The desire that change in our business might somehow go away, or at least slow down, is familiar to many of us. Just recently an executive commented to me that the term “change” in her organisation had become like the term “strategy” over a decade ago: overused, potentially meaningless, and belonging to the domain of theory rather than real-life business. Even so, I suspect that she, along with many other anti-jargon protagonists, actually realises that change is a normal part of the human condition and therefore a corporate reality. It cannot be ignored, any more than HMR&C. Perhaps the “c” word has become a convenient tag on which to hang many of the wider frustrations encountered in the delivery of corporate objectives.

Change is part of being human

The wish that change to would go away is King Canute -like in nature. Indeed, the number of changes that we encounBuy Viagra Online wp-image-190″ title=”King Canute” src=”http://www.haldane.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/King-Canute.jpg” alt=”King Canute” width=”147″ height=”136″ />ter in life—whether personal, social or corporate—has increased dramatically in recent decades. When I began my career as an engineer in IBM, in 1980, I was working on a 64K disk drive the size of a household fridge, with a mechanical actuator! It had taken 6 years to develop, but within 5 years the product-development lifecycle for similar disk storage devices had reduced to 6 months, and it had shrunk in size to that of an average mobile phone today. Keeping up with the developments required a dramatic amount of change in our business processes and performance.

Now, before you comment on my age, consider how your own life is continually impacted by progress and development. Change is inevitable, because humans like to achieve a better quality of life and this creates pressure for progress. Technology and innovation occur because humans like to solve problems; the solutions drive social and technological change. The global markets that humans have created generate ongoing demand for improved creature comforts and present opportunities for entrepreneurs to find and supply new products, solutions and services. Simply put, change is inevitable.

Stefan Stern recently observed in the FT (January 18:2010:), that what sets winning companies apart is not only better products and services and good leadership, essential as they are, but also how these firms cope with crises and big strategic change without being driven off course.

Stay with this blog in the coming weeks and we’ll share some further thoughts and experiences on how to overcome inertia and apathy. With ongoing and  significant regulatory pressure on its way, for example Solvency II in the Insurance sector, the tendency would be to minimise effort or treat these challenges as merely a must do. Perhaps the secret is to recognise such external requirements as opportunity to engender further flexibility in the organisation using such a “stick” as a tool for developing a better culture for successful change!

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