Dealing with change

Been looking at a discussion group of change and project managers and the bit that has taken my interest has been on the management of a Turnaround compared to a Planned Change scenario.

There was some unpleasantness for a while especially as the Turnaround specialists got heavy and the Change Management professionals got protective of the people but it settled down in the end.

What got through to me though was how when it comes down to it the 'people' really are the core whatever the situation. A company is just an agglomeration of people working a bunch of processes as best they can. Ideally it will be a self-organising agglomeration but often it isn't. And in a turnaround less so than ever.

Let's face it - it will often be the self-organising that got us in the mess in the first place. Eye off the ball, no shared view of the outcome, too much focus on the current processes etc.

The thing is, with a company is there's entropy to deal with. And entropy increases. Without the addition of energy often from the change management experts or turnaround manager if more fierceness is needed the system's entropy continues to increase. Till it grinds to a halt.

People are in many ways just intelligent machines. And they will continued doing what they do till the 'control' makes them do something else. Now we're dealing with inertia.

And while people may hate the idea of being like a machine - well... examine your soul and tell me about the last time you changed the way you do something without some kind of stimulus from outside...