By all of the usual indicators -- number of books, articles, and workshops -- change management is the one of the latest fads in business today.  But introducing organizational changes is certainly not new, nor for that matter is the field of organizational change management (OCM).  And like many of the major fads that have preceded OCM (TQM, BPR, and MBO to name a few) the results are not encouraging. 

At the very least they seldom live up to their advance billing..

Even so, the popularity of change management is hardly surprising.  Demanding customers, novel and unpredictable competitors, and unimaginable information technology possibilities have all had a destabilizing impact on organizations and their mangers.

Organizational response capacity is typically limited.  Our organizations are basically designed to maintain the status quo, not for change.  The policies, procedures, management systems, hierarchical structures, and cultural norms support the dual purposes of control and uniformity, not flexibility and rapid response. Organizations also tend to be over-managed and underled, and employees are generally disenchanted.

Since change is truly our only constant, the key challenge we face is to build organizational change capacity -- that is, the ability to anticipate and quickly adapt to rapidly changing customer needs.

But when we take a closer look at current approaches to change management we see that they are often dated, one-off, simplistic and superficial, misguided and counterproductive, manipulative, divisive and insulting.  They are largely a product of  the same mindset that has produced “overmanaged and underled” organizations.  They are, in fact, fundamentally designed to regain stability, not build organizational change capacity.
We have borrowed from ancient philosophy and the seven deadly sins to frame the pitfalls of current approaches to change management.  In the same fashion that the deadly sins could bring great dismay to the transgressor, the deadly sons of change management could be dangerous to your organization’s long-term health and well-being

The Solution

Ancient philosophy had its own antidote to the seven deadly sins -- the four cardinal virtues: justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude.  The antidotes to the seven deadly sins of change management, and the guiding principles for building change capacity are equally demanding: focus, trust, alignment, and accountability.

Benefits

The prescriptions are offered to help you avoid the potential pitfalls of many of the popular approaches to change management.  The focus is on  results, and on how to increase your organization’s change capacity, not simply implement single initiatives.  In adopting this fad-free approach you can make change a normal part of running the business.

Preview

In this series we describe each of the seven deadly sins of change management in more detail—what each is, and the unintended adverse consequences.  Similarly, we describe in more detail the antidotes to these deadly sins, the four cardinal virtues of change capacity.