Why change?

Change doesn’t need to be radical. Sometimes it has to, but most of times, it’s smarter to keep it moderate and incremental. No change, on the contrary, will inevitably lead to radical consequences and dramatic (if not traumatic) results. – An avoidable scenario.

Having said that (and from a purely theoretical point of view), this blog entry could end right here. However, the actual reality in many organizations often looks quite different. When it comes down to essentially dealing with a changing strategic, economic, cultural, social or otherwise competitive environment, typically even the most basic but truly necessary adaptations are left aside, undervalued, de-prioritized, partially cancelled, procrastinated or, worst of all, entirely forgotten.

It’s like with our very own, personal health: if we don’t constantly keep training, bit by bit, every day, watching out for a correspondingly smart nutrition, we will sooner or later feel weaker, less effective, less healthy, less happy(!) etc. Ultimately, we get sick – because we’ve failed to do the normal maintenance work required to secure a strong immune system.

In the end, this leaves us both sick and unhappy because we’re sick. And then, typically when it’s almost too late, we’re doing something about it. All we want when we’re sick is having back our health. When we’re down & out, anything else becomes secondary; we just want to be healthy again. That’s just us: it’s human behavior. Unfortunately, that’s no excuse: If we stop caring for ourselves for too long, we’ll pay a high price. We tend to react at a very late stage of any slow progression into an unhealthy condition. We procrastinate the actual healing process BECAUSE IT TAKES TIME.

The very same principles apply to macro-organisms such as organizations which consist of its people: if we stop to maintain a healthy strategic approach to the changes around us or inside of our organizations, we put everything at risk – and we pay a high price for external support. At the end of the day, we realize it would have been smarter & cheaper if we’d have done our homework every day and not let tasks pile up until their pressure becomes impossible to handle.

That’s why successful organizations EMBRACE CHANGE.

How about yourself? Feel welcome to share your thoughts about the necessity of change!

About the author:

Thomas Pacal is the CEO, founder & owner of EMBRACE – a management consultancy specializing in post-M&A change management, restructuring and re-stabilizing of large organizations. He is passionate about the reliability of change and frequently contributes articles about his industry.