Change Management

With almost every human being resisting change on one hand and on the other hand craving for change, is it not the biggest paradox in our life ?

Yes and No ! On the face of it, it appears that change plays a contradictory role in our lives but  when we closely scrutinize we find that while we seek certain things and situations in life which will bring us closer to the ‘ideal’ state that we crave for. These wants are the changes we seek. In reality things could be a bit different - why a bit different – quite different most of the time. The changes that actually set in around us are not always the ones that we wished and we often find ourselves required to be adjusting to the new environment or the new requirements.

Here we shall discuss the changes that are forced upon us or the ones that we find ourselves struggling to manage.

Going through and acknowledging the new office circular with changed work norms and demanding results are akin to signing the approval for a new appointment letter. The business competitiveness is driving most companies to keep exploring new ways of doing business, surviving or improving bottom line. The desired goals are to be broken into achievable plans which percolate down to changed methods of delivering results. This could be stressing for most of those employees who are caught unaware by the speed of changes or have become complacent.

The change could involve picking up a new language or skill, learning a new method to do a thing or acquiring information to solve a set of technical difficulties which have cropped up overnight.

The change could also mean adjusting to new norms, procedures, systems, people or environment. What shakes the person up is that this apparent change comes with a set of changes chained to it and it often becomes confusing to decide which end to start off making adjustments with the changes.

A person who has been picked up for higher responsibilities and has to move to a new city does not only have to acquire new competencies for the challenges ahead but apart from adjusting with the new set of people, has to also find a house, secure admission for children and also sort out his other personal priorities. Traditionally everyone has faced these challenges and therefore neither any superior nor the organization thinks of extending any additional support to the person facing an absolute set of new difficulties. In the process the person learns and matures.

Prioritising plays a very crucial role in handling this series of changes that occur simultaneously or one after another. Effective planning, contingency plans and deadlines ensure each requirement gets fulfilled paving way for focus on the next deliverable and thereby ending up executing the whole series.

The difference between ‘today’ and ‘future’ is the transition between the old roles and the new roles; comforts and the new responsibilities; familiarity and the unfamiliar and the controllable and the risky. Therefore change can be termed as a transition between now and the future.

In this transition we need to understand the individual’s values and beliefs, the power of change inhibitors and accept that unhappiness will be an obvious component in the process of change.

Not only a good plan is required during the process of change but the whole exercise should be people centric and devoid of errors.