If you compare an organization to an organism and the economy to the ecology* then only the one survives who are the fittest, who fit in the best. This adaption requires change. Change can be driven by external forces such as disruptive technologies e.g., the typewriter became obsolete at one point. Or by internal forces.

First one is the regular one. Companies such as SME who reached a certain size often reach a certain attitude regarding the status quo. Yes, for sure they try to be more effective, increase a bit the quality but often we see that they struggle to evolve into something new. It is much like it happens often in our personal lives. Once we got comfortable our willingness to move and change decreases a lot. Rather than going actively out of our comfort zone we remain in the light, in the known. Rather than seeking the opportunity we seek security until the point something hit us “out of nowhere”. Relationships break or we get sick or something else pushes us out of our determined way. Like a object in the space who suddenly hits a gigantic rock and the scientifically calculated way suddenly gets interrupted. We get smashed and our pieces are thrown out in the space. But much like the space where this accidents are necessary in order to create new elements and therefore planets, this is how life goes, we need to understand that such a massive change, even if hits us rock hard it is neccessary to create new things.

But change is hard. Even just changing a fucking small habit. Requires every day work, everyday will power. Again change is hard.
Therefore, the benefits of this change have to be clearly visible in order to keep us motivated. What I found very useful for myself is a vision board. Really program your brain. Advertising is fucking around with our brain all the time smashing their messages inside by permanent repetition, why not using this tactic for personal development?

However for an organization it is even more important to show their vision. The way the organization want to go and evolve. You can not expect that individuals with different background can understand the need of change and why there is change. This message has to be transported as often as possible wherever possible.
So where does change management come from? While change comes in the best way from innovative ideas within the organization. The frame (the management of the change) has to be given by the management. From my personal experience it is often the other way around. Management tells what they want to change but no indication with what resources, why it is necessary and therefore people lack of motivation to change really. As in the worst-case daily business workload is pilling up while the department hast to fulfil the order from the dark side. With this “pull yourself out” attitude from the management regarding the people, the success rate of projects is rather moderate.

Beside creating the right environment management has to deliver the why and trust the people to find the solution. Often, I saw management is giving the solution top down and then measures how well people are adopting it. But an idea developed not by yourself you will always tend to not accept it. You need charismatic leaders and super good established trust relationships when you want that this approach works. Even changes with the best intention to make the life of the people inside the company will fail then.

To summarize my thought from above I think an encouraging change management needs:

• To state the goal in a clear way. By writing a letter to the workers
• Create spaces for exchanging ideas
• Create time and space for letting people implement their ideas in the reality
• Step by step this will lead to a culture where employees more often challenging the status quo (5 whys)
• Always pick up ideas of others and play with them and think how to make them work or to evolve them into something completely new.

From the employee point of view, I made the experience that is is always good to provide a solution to the management when you want to create change inside the company. Make suggestions how to improve the situation, the process not simply state out the fact that the situation is bad or the process is not working. Also avoid to say that the situation is per se bad. As this often pushes the responsible person in the defense mode and creates an atmosphere where new ideas can not be discussed in a neutral way.

In the end I would like to point out that new ideas and change is a creative process. We have all the information in the world. It is about how we use this information for us and create and put them together. This is a topic for another blog post. Also as in personal development working on a new project is a challenge butbeing successful outside of the comfort zone and overcome difficulties is a extremely important experience for strengthening your personal confidence. The same can be said about team projects.

Please let me know how you think change management can be handled and to create an innovative environment in a company which is settled.