There seems to be an assumption that change is a single traumatic event that is thrust upon us and over which we have no control.

In the recent past this was definitely true, in industry there would come a sudden realisation at the end of the financial year that unless we did something radical we were going to the wall.

The huge and destructive changes that then occurred fitted this model.




Today we no longer have to be driven by change.

Instead we can use change itself to our competitive advantage.


There seems to be an assumption that change is a single traumatic event that is thrust upon us and over which we have no control.
In the recent past this was definitely true, in industry there would come a sudden realisation at the end of the financial year that unless we did something radical we were going to the wall.
The huge and destructive changes that then occurred fitted this model.

Kurt Lewin suggested that change is divided into three phases.

Unfreezing,
Change,
Refreezing.

This finite process with a beginning middle and end is dated in a climate that is today too dynamic to allow us the luxury of such a mechanistic process.
Our competitors, our industry and our technology are changing so quickly that we must change constantly to keep up.
If we have to stop to make a change we will be lost.

Kurt's proposition is many years old and an indication of how much our understanding and use of change has developed is the difference between the assumptions made then and what is actually happening now, years later.

Change has now been accepted as a part of the way we need to react to continue to stay competitive.
But it is still administered in large indigestible lumps and for the most part we still have no control.

Today we are going to the next level.

The process of change itself must become dynamic.
The only way this can be achieved is to make change part of our daily expectation.

Every day we must consider how to improve and that is not possible unless the environment is created that allows us to want to get better at what we do.

How to change that environment is the key.

When the workforce becomes involved in the change instead of having it thrust upon them, their ideas are respected and used, the resistance to change disappears.
We create a workforce that is powerful and valuable, who are proud of their ability to improve the performance of their organisation and constantly seek new ways to personally add value.

This sounds like a fantasy based on the plot for a perfect organisation which we know will never be recreated in reality.

But this fantasy is already a reality.

We are currently preparing a series of articles for publication in this forum that will show unequivocally how this change has already been made and can be made in almost any organisations with the value that it will add to the bottom line.