Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Initiatingchange

Change is in small adaptations that tilt scales, but also in big paradigm shifts that rebuild the scales.

Organizations and human societies become over-complex and interdependent, change or problem-solving are important perspectives for driving business forward. Change management today has a very wide scope, intricate factors and needs to take an interdisciplinary approach. 

Change should never happen for its own sake, without figuring out the “why” part of change. For change to be embraced by various stakeholders, they ultimately need to understand what’s exactly the problems, what’s the philosophy for leading change; when it’s the right timing for change, who are change agents, how to change effectively and sustain its impact.

People understand accountability with the sense of urgency: Change is inevitable with increasing pace, there’s a variety of changes from incremental behavior change to mind-shift; from a few software updates to process optimization; from operation improvement to strategic movement; from transaction to transformation, etc. In practice, Change Management is all about balancing the main success factors impacting change such as people, strategy, process and information technology. Change could occur at the level of the individual and it is only when the management has a sense of urgency, the majority of people are on the journey that the real results start to emerge. The management can ask people to change their behavior manually; however, to keep change sustainable, people need to change their attitude, enhance accountability for what they decide, and do, becoming part of solution rather than generate more issues.

Top management should be able to motivate change at the right timing. The good moment to change is when the top senses the urgency and the bottom feels the pain. Change inertia can be minimized via common understanding about the necessity and imperatives of changes. Professionals should be conscious of what they think of change and they are responsible for their actions. They should be accountable to his/her company, to themselves or their conscience. Collectively, accountability needs to be well embedded in the organizational culture, to encourage responsible communication, decision-making, and action; true accountability focuses on learning; it goes hand in hand with the delegation of authority or power, and it’s harnessed by autonomy.

People provide the best quality even if nobody is looking: The degree of quality is in everything people do and experience. Quality conveys what we think, what we do, and what we deliver. Quality leaders and employees demonstrate both intellectual understanding and emotional maturity; the good attitude and great aptitude, working together as a team to excel in quality products or services delivery. People's quality often decides the quality of the other part of the business. High quality people are consistent with what they think and do; provide the best quality even if the management is not around.

Quality assessment is to evaluate both individual and team performance on how effectively they can improve the quality of products/service, their skill/capability/potential, as well as their learning agility to bring business to the next level of maturity." Quality Management is not one department’s work, it’s like "change management," needs to be embedded into the corporate culture. Organizational excellence is achieved by delivering qualified products or services and continuously improving business performance.

People can agree to disagree and move on: Change is often not the straight line, change is never for its own sake, it’s about improvement or innovation; it involves learning to ride above the change curve, adapting to an ever-evolving environment, and collaborating for amplifying change effectively. Organizations or societies are becoming more diversified, inundated with exponential growth of information, variety of people, enriched cultural ingredients, etc. People do not have to agree with one another in order to learn from and with one another. People shouldn’t blindly follow their management completely for driving changes, but they need to be pulled in the same direction. Critical thinking and complementary skills are important to improve change effectiveness.

Change is the journey, either individually or collectively; with unprecedented uncertainty and high velocity, the reality is that there are a lot of things that can go wrong and it is not always easy to identify what is important. There is much in the world we do not know nor understand and because of that limitation, we need to choose to continue to learn, grow and empower people to learn and grow too. The blurring line of organizational border and the uncharted frontier provides both unprecedented opportunities and emergent risks for change management. So we have to have the ability to ask the hard questions and engage in meaningful dialogue even if we do not agree with one another completely, we can indeed agree to disagree yet, set common ground, stay engaged with one another to make change happen.

Change is in small adaptations that tilt scales, but also in big paradigm shifts that rebuild the scales. Great change leaders have the clear vision to lead forward, a unique set of capabilities to lead effectively and soft skills to communicate and motivate the team to drive change step-wisely and make collective progress.






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