Change Management - and Embracing Change

Skip Angel, over at Random Thoughts of a CTO, post this thought-provoking entry on "Embracing Change."

His assertions?

• You can't be a leader if you are unwilling to embrace change.
• To be a successful leader, you must be proactive and make changes now that will avoid the "break" in the future to be much more significant.
• Ease the change carefully and communicate constantly (including listening) to make sure that people can see the value and need for change but also to reduce conflicts and risks through the process.

Change presents itself in a variety of ways:

• People change (or leave), with them you lose skills and particularly knowledge that will need to be transferred to others. Sometimes that it is easy, sometimes it requires reorganization.
• Technologies change. Products can become discontinued, or support become limited because the company has moved to newer technologies. Therefore, the tools you use in your work would need to change.
• Markets and customers change. Whole new markets or different "players" because of mergers and acquistions. Therefore, you might see changes in your products and services that you didn't anticipate.

BOTTOMLINE: Skip's assertion: "Sticking with the status quo with all of these kinds of changes could not only stop working but could get you quickly off-course. Therefore, if you want things to keep flowing, you got to be one step ahead on where the flow is taking you and make course corrections as needed. Those that can successfully do that, without major impact to the organization, are considered great leaders."