The perceptions of change and the range
of reactions to it that occur within today’s businesses are as varied as the
businesses themselves – and rightly so, because organizations are all unique,
with their own ingrained cultural attributes and histories.
Every organization has gone through trials and triumphs, and each such experience delivers with it lessons that become part of their story and institutional memory. These ultimately shape companies’ attitude and approach toward their futures. It is that which guides them forward in how they deal with change.
So it’s no surprise to see how two very different companies react today to multiple changes occurring in the external worlds in which they operate. These two companies are as different as night and day.
First is a large, 100-year-old American manufacturing company with deeply held traditions. The CEO worked his way up the leadership ladder, as had his predecessors. The CEO and his leadership team are accustomed to defining the current reality and directing how their managers and employees should respond.
To date, the company has seen steady growth throughout its life. But it is beginning to experience a downturn in that pattern due to a range of external factors beyond its control. Fortunately, the leadership recognizes and acknowledges those forces.
Our second example, Company Two, is a professional services company that went through agonizing trials through the economy of 2008-onwards that resulted in many of its competitors going under or merging, and many others emerging far different than they were going in. Company Two falls into this latter category: a different company today than it was in 2007.
Different Approaches to Change
So how are these two very different organizations dealing with change today?
The traditional command-and-control company is struggling. People are waiting for the CEO to tell them what to do. And so far, he’s only told them to become empowered and start taking risks. But this runs against what they’ve actually experienced. So people are cautiously hanging back, watching and waiting.
Company Two, on the other hand, rightly acknowledges that change is already happening to them. The leaders at Company Two speak of what they must become. But they do so in the present tense. Its leadership sees that change is something that they must be doing now. In other words, they cannot afford merely to plan for change. They must live the change constantly – right now.
Done right, this far more aggressive approach to change becomes a company’s new culture. But this is a remarkably different approach to how most companies deal with change today.
Conventionally, in the context of the business, most people think of change they will undertake as a moment in time. They say that change is imposing itself on them and they must figure out how to respond. It is something they will do at some point in the future, as though planning to pivot and head off in another direction.
On the other hand, as we've grown accustomed to this notion of change as a constant state of affairs, we have come to realize that we must continuously prepare for change that will always come at us. This is a new concept for most organizations. It is almost as foreign as trying to conceive of time as the fourth dimension.
Not only must we be prepared for change. We must assume that it is already happening to us and so become now what we must be tomorrow.
That said, what would the world look like to Company One after it has planned and fully executed its internal changes? Likely, that external world will have further evolved, necessitating further changes.
Perhaps this is what Company Two discovered in the midst of the turmoil of the economic crisis of 2008: that change must become a permanent mindset and way of operating.
Every organization has gone through trials and triumphs, and each such experience delivers with it lessons that become part of their story and institutional memory. These ultimately shape companies’ attitude and approach toward their futures. It is that which guides them forward in how they deal with change.
So it’s no surprise to see how two very different companies react today to multiple changes occurring in the external worlds in which they operate. These two companies are as different as night and day.
First is a large, 100-year-old American manufacturing company with deeply held traditions. The CEO worked his way up the leadership ladder, as had his predecessors. The CEO and his leadership team are accustomed to defining the current reality and directing how their managers and employees should respond.
To date, the company has seen steady growth throughout its life. But it is beginning to experience a downturn in that pattern due to a range of external factors beyond its control. Fortunately, the leadership recognizes and acknowledges those forces.
Our second example, Company Two, is a professional services company that went through agonizing trials through the economy of 2008-onwards that resulted in many of its competitors going under or merging, and many others emerging far different than they were going in. Company Two falls into this latter category: a different company today than it was in 2007.
Different Approaches to Change
So how are these two very different organizations dealing with change today?
The traditional command-and-control company is struggling. People are waiting for the CEO to tell them what to do. And so far, he’s only told them to become empowered and start taking risks. But this runs against what they’ve actually experienced. So people are cautiously hanging back, watching and waiting.
Company Two, on the other hand, rightly acknowledges that change is already happening to them. The leaders at Company Two speak of what they must become. But they do so in the present tense. Its leadership sees that change is something that they must be doing now. In other words, they cannot afford merely to plan for change. They must live the change constantly – right now.
Done right, this far more aggressive approach to change becomes a company’s new culture. But this is a remarkably different approach to how most companies deal with change today.
Conventionally, in the context of the business, most people think of change they will undertake as a moment in time. They say that change is imposing itself on them and they must figure out how to respond. It is something they will do at some point in the future, as though planning to pivot and head off in another direction.
On the other hand, as we've grown accustomed to this notion of change as a constant state of affairs, we have come to realize that we must continuously prepare for change that will always come at us. This is a new concept for most organizations. It is almost as foreign as trying to conceive of time as the fourth dimension.
Not only must we be prepared for change. We must assume that it is already happening to us and so become now what we must be tomorrow.
That said, what would the world look like to Company One after it has planned and fully executed its internal changes? Likely, that external world will have further evolved, necessitating further changes.
Perhaps this is what Company Two discovered in the midst of the turmoil of the economic crisis of 2008: that change must become a permanent mindset and way of operating.
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