Understanding Change: The Challenge Of Transformation

It is often said that change is the only reality rest is subject to change. Traditionally and universally it is believed that people resist change due to its displacing effect overtime. However, people move towards its acceptance through negotiations over the ‘price’ of change. History has time and again proven that the process of change is inevitable in the progress of mankind. The ability of the human race to innovate has brought about radical transformation of society. All countries of the world are undergoing some kind of change, which is especially true in the context of organizations. At times like this, more than ever, it is essential that the organizations appreciate the human resource management skills required to successfully handle the transformation of industry through one of its most critical periods.

‘ The times are changing’, sang Bob Dylan, and ‘more is the pity’ perhaps you say. Perhaps, you are a manager in a manufacturing or Service Company or a public authority and ‘they’ won’t let you alone to get on with things. Always something new is coming in, the organization is restructured, the company gets taken over, or new, government regulations or deregulations come in and change everything. Change- it’s the one aspect of life that never seems to change. It happens all the time. The only thing is that mere seems to be more of it happens more and more quickly. There is never time to catch your breath. We have an exciting picture of the human mind as a flow of impressions, and emotions and ideas, which connect them. The thinking we do about the impressions is part of the change process, because the bringing of things into new connections present them in the new light- indeed changes them.

So if change is the microsecond-by-microsecond essence of living, our theme of the need for a change mindset should not be difficult to absorb, because it fits with the very structure and of our thinking. In terms of Reg Revans frame with two little symbols L>C and C>L. If learning is represented by L and change represented by C then the first symbol means you are ahead in the game- you are learning faster than things change. The second can spell disaster, because things are changing faster than you are learning, so that you are behind the race. Thus the different people can better understand change in a different way as in the following box:

• Change can be defined as to make or become different, give or begin to have a different form.
• Change also means dissatisfaction with the old and belief in the new.
• Change underlines a qualitatively different way of perceiving, thinking and behaving to improve over the past and present.
• Change can be seen as continuous and intrinsic to an organization or as extrinsic & discontinuous.
• Change can be patterned and predictable or complex and unpredictable.
• Change is dual or bipolar continuity without change leads to stagnation, frustration and boredom in individuals and change without continuity leads to ambiguity, conflict and degenerative pathology in individuals and organizations.
• The rate of change is faster than our ability to comprehend and cope with it.