Page 20 - Managing Change in Organizations

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1 The challenge of change

Introduction

Everyone says that change is difficult. Difficult to conceive because one must
inevitably deal with people issues and an uncertain future. The more so to imple-
ment because consequences can be difficult to predict, harder to track and therefore
can create a dynamic all of their own. In particular, everyone claims that major
change is hard because of the so-called ‘soft’ or people issues. Is this really so?
Does the reader know of any organization or institution which has not experi-
enced change in the last decade or so? Would anyone seriously argue that we are
not living in a period of rapid change? Is it not true that we are also living in an
era through which dramatic changes of productivity, technology, brand, image
and reputation are commonplace?
Some will say ‘yes’ to these questions but then question the longer-term con-
sequences. What kind of society are we creating? Do we devote enough attention
to the long-term consequences of what we do? Fair enough, but that is to shift
the argument. The fact is that more and more change is being delivered.
Organizations are engaged in delivering higher productivity, higher levels of
activity and customer satisfaction and so on. This is not to say that all is well nor

that all are successful. Rather it is to note that organizations have grown volumes,
activity and profitability during a period in which ever more complex demands
(for customer satisfaction and business ethics) have been added in the increas-
ingly complex and diverse environments in which we operate. The challenge facing
the senior executive has grown and yet more change is being achieved.
So we must be getting something right! It may be possible to see change as
demanding and tiring but not as necessarily inherently difficult. This argument
partly turns on the idea of ‘resistance to change’. Some argue that people are
inherently resistant to change. Whether for personal or institutional reasons,
strategic change can be beset by opposition from key stakeholders, whether key
professionals, other vested interests, unions and the like. Although this is true
and I do not seek to diminish the importance of this point, it is a partial truth.
Much of what we refer to as ‘resistance to change’ is really ‘resistance to uncer-
tainty’. Thus the resistance derives from the process of handling and managing
change, not from the change as such.

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