Managing Change

Change management as a concept is one of those smack-your-head-duh type of things. Especially in the office. Change happens, and I guess we can either ignore it and let change do to us what it will, or we can try to manage it and do what we can to make the transition as easy as possible.

I got a book (I get lots of books), The Truth About Thriving in Change, by William S. Kane. It's written in a quick read format, which I'm not yet sure about. I've read a few of the "truths", but I haven't decided whether the author goes deeply enough into each truth to satisfy my curiosity. So, truth 1 - "Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react".  Another one of those obvious statements that people rarely recognize. We get to choose how we react to everything that happens to us. We can choose to fight the inevitable, but if change is going to happen, what's the use? We can panic, but panic never helps in any situation. When we panic, reason shuts down and any chance to drive change is gone.

There are a few other truths in this book that really caught my attention. "Don't surround yourself with yourself."  No kidding. Who wants to be surrounded by people who only tell us what we want to hear? What a waste of time. "People can't drink from a firehose." I lost count of the number of times I've almost drowned while trying to drink from a firehose. New information has to come in doses that can be swallowed and integrated, otherwise too much of it gets lost and has to be learned again (another waste of time).

I hope some day to get to manage change instead of get buried under it. I think too many times we attempt change from a very top down perspective, not understanding or not accepting that change has to be recognized and worked on at all levels of the organization. Sure, at some point those who don't accept changes that have happened will have to be given the choice to join in or get out, but that threat isn't the best way to get people to want to change, which leads to the last truth from this book that I really want to mention "Trust is a currency not easily earned, but easily spent."  Handling change the wrong way is a great way to kill trust. Threats kill trust. Brute force will kill trust. There are strong-arm tactics that should be left until all other options are exhausted because even if people seem to accept the change, they may never trust again.

Most of these things are just common sense, basic human things that so often we just don't seem to know. Wonder why that is.