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Change

Business is just like riding a bicycle: Either you are moving or falling. A successful company is constantly renewing itself, adapting to change. People usually resist to changes. Resistance to change is the most natural of human reactions and it is based on uncertainty on fear of losing the job, on fear of not be able to cope with a new situation. It’s based on lack of trust in the decision makers and on the feeling of lack of control over the situation.

A good manager will not ignore all this facts but will try to manage resistance to change very carefully. He will start with reality, get all of the facts out, give people the rational for change laying it out in the clearest most dramatic terms. Then everybody gets the same facts they will generally come to the same conclusion. It’s very important how people of the company view changes. If they see as a threat the company loses. But if they see change as an opportunity for improvement using all their professional skills the company wins and every door they pass through will swing open to them. Gradual change doesn’t work in many business companies because if the change isn’t big enough the bureaucracy can beat it.

Famous British and American leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt very bold in making changes. They just said: This is that is going to be and they did it. The success of a change depends on the leaders, their enormous energy and the ability to energise invigorate others to stimulate change and not be frightened or paralised by it.

Most bureaucracies unfortunately think in incremental terms rather than in terms of fundamental change. Changing and improving the company or personality means constantly asking how fast am I going, how well am I doing my job, how well I did a year or 2 years ago. How fast and how well am I doing compared with the both outside? Are we moving faster? And are we doing better against that external standard?