“Do You Create Change or Manage Change?”- Professor M.S.Rao

“A change leader looks for change, knows how to find the right changes and knows how to make them effective both outside the organization and inside it.” - Peter F Drucker



People crave for changing their food, clothes, lifestyles and several other things. However, they resist when there is change in management, policies, procedures, systems and structures within their organizations. It sounds strange, right! People resist change when it is thrust upon them. Probably, because anything imposed will be opposed!


Treat Change as a Friend, not as a Foe

Some treat ‘change’ as a challenge, some as a learning and some as an obstacle. Everything is there in your mind. You can treat ‘change’ as an opportunity to learn. You can treat it as an opportunity to grow. There is need for right attitude towards ‘change’ in today’s world. And also there is need to develop an attitude to treat change as a friend rather than a foe.

The river that goes to sea undergoes several changes in direction during the course of its journey and sometimes with slow and swift pace. So is the case of human life. Throughout human life, man undergoes several challenges such as peaks, valleys, smooth and rough terrains. The only successful people are the ones that accept and mould themselves as per the changing environment. Truth is that change is inevitable. Change is the mantra for your survival and success. The business scenario is changing rapidly and the organizations need to keep pace with the same and reinvent and evolve accordingly.


Leaders and Change

Leaders find it tough to manage and effect change. Leaders are aware that change is the only thing constant in this world. They are proactive and treat change as a friend rather than a foe. They are aware that change is the key to organizational survival and growth.

Jack Welch cautioned, “If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.” The only thing constant in the corporate world is change and competition. Every change is made for a reason. Nobody can survive without change. Change requires a new mindset, tool set and skill set.


Unsuccessful Leaders and Change

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” - Richard Bach

Successful people often resist change while the unsuccessful people prefer to change as the latter tend to think in multiple ways to achieve success. Unsuccessful people are also aware that success comes at a cost. When we look at a leader like Abraham Lincoln, he was unsuccessful number of times. He made the world sit up and take notice during his brief tenure as the President of America by preserving the unity of America and ending slavery. He learnt the lessons in a hard way in his initial failures. He knew what did not work to reach to the top and that helped him become one of the best Presidents of America. Similarly when we look at Edison he was unsuccessful number of times in inventing bulb. But he made it possible as he knew what did not work. John Seely Brown, Xerox Corp's former chief scientist, rightly noted, "The more success you achieve–either as an individual or as an organization–the more difficult it is to change. All of the learning that led to one kind of success becomes implicitly coded and works against your ability to unlearn."


Takeaways

“We are not creatures of circumstances, we are the creators of circumstance” – Disraeli

It is a fact that organizations that create change can move more rapidly than the ones that manage change. And creating change is possible only when there is cooperation on the part of the organizational members to create change constructively. Leaders can change the fate of their organizations with the stroke of a pen. Hence, they must learn to use their pens to create rather than to manage change with the changing times and technologies for ensuring organizational excellence and effectiveness.



Professor M.S.Rao
Founder and Chief Consultant,
MSR Leadership Consultants, India
Blog: http://profmsr.blogspot.com
Where Knowledge is Wealth
Email: profmsr7@gmail.com



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