A630.6.4.RB_HallMike

Change.  It can be both a great thing for people and a bad thing.  I have seen at least 40 out of the 50 reasons not to change on the list from the presentation and I do not work in the business sector.  Instead I work in a very stable government organization where very little changes aside from technology.  That doesn’t mean that no change occurs however.  I have described several different changes that occurred on my boat in my time on her, and every change event was prefaced with statements like, “it’s not possible,” or “the CO isn’t going to like that,” or the best answer, “but that’s the way we have always done it.”  Every one of those answers is comprised of different words yet they all have the same meaning – I see that you want to change things and I’m not willing/ready for it.  As someone who tends to look for better ways to do things, nothing irritates me more than to hear one of those excuses as soon as I finish talking about the proposed change.  If you have a logical reason why something might work, by all means, express that; if however you have no real reason against the change other than that it is going to take you out of your norm, please keep it to yourself!

Knowing that these statements irritate me as much as they do, I try very hard to not give them myself.  As I said above, I am always looking at ways to improve efficiency and am often willing to go to great lengths to give things a try.  If a proposed change passes my logic test (i.e. I do not have a factual reason why it won’t work, for example it is against written procedure), then I will be more than happy to allow that to get passed up the chain of command.  If the idea doesn’t pass the logic test, I will explicitly state why it won’t work.  I think that you must have an attitude similar to my own in order to not put up road blocks to change.  Keep an open mind and look out for factual reasons why something might work.

I completely agree with Seth’s point on change being driven by tribes.  So much of our existence is associated with our desire to be part of a group, and the internet has drastically increased our ability to do so.  As part of that, people often do not want to go against what the group wants; additionally so much of our actions are based on how we think we will be perceived by the group.  As a result, change can be a taboo topic with many people.  One must be willing to break away from the group sometimes in order to make change occur.

The big take away from this week’s discussion is that you must facilitate change in order to be an effective leader.  Sometimes there will be hard decisions to be made, and often change will be viewed as highly undesirable, however as the leader of the organization, you must have the future vision of where you want your organization to go – people can either change with you or get left behind.