Managing Change

Consultant and author Arnold Brown thinks a lot about well … thinking.

In his new book, FutureThink, he connects the idea of how our thought processes affect the way we deal with change in our organizations.

In this article from Optimize Magazine, he was asked "What's the hardest thing about managing change?"

"People always talk about the learning curve. The hardest thing is the forgetting curve. You have to discard what you think you know. And the higher you go in management, the more difficult it is. When things are changing rapidly, you have to abandon information that is no longer useful. That takes a certain amount of courage. It's jumping into the pool when you're not sure you can swim."

"When people have acquired a certain amount of knowledge, the same thing happens. Everything is filtered through their expertise. They don't see what's happening. They don't see the signs of change. It's called educated incapacity—the more you know, the harder it is to see anything new. You have to get people to become more objective.

It's hard to do—I've been doing this for 35 years, and I still have to force myself to be objective.

It takes constant practice, but if you require and reward it, you'll get people doing it."

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