‘Change management’ usually forgets a vital component: the things that don’t change or need to change, or, indeed, must not change. For every change, you need to decide and articulate what is not for change. For example your value framework.
A great deal of anxiety could be avoided if leaders could equally emphasize ‘the changes’ and ‘the non-changes’.
Change does not have to be complete instability. Creating change and destroying all confidence at the same time, is madness. Needing a stability anchor (‘this will not change’) is not resistance to change.
Very often we don’t articulate well the goals and the ambitions, the journey. We also penalise people who ‘resist’ and make them ‘bad managers’. We create unnecessary anxiety and then we invoke the ‘people are resistant to change’ mantra.
Change requires a continuous re-calibration, it’s not linear. Some things change faster, others slower, others don’t at all. The question is whether they are the right bits in the right baskets. The wrong content in the wrong baskets is bad
Change management’, is exhausted. It needs a good holiday in a place with critical thinking in the water supply. Perhaps a way to reinvigorate and renew, after that holiday, that is, is to start like this: Change Management plans, point 1:’ this will not change’.
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