Managing Change – Flexibility or Fallibility?
A few of my long-term projects lately have been encountering changes on the fly. OK, if I am being honest here – the actual truth is that every project I’ve ever worked on in the past ??? years has faced change requests somewhere along the path to completion. YET, every time an email floats in that threatens to alter scope, resources or content, I stare at the laptop like an alien in a UFO just landed on the keyboard. My heart flutters and a certain minuscule level of anger rises up in me. What is wrong with me… shouldn’t someone tell me to stop being surprised by now??!!
The only constant is change…
Did I even need to block quote that? I think not. We all know that change is inevitable, unavoidable, unexpected yet expected, annoying and welcome at the same time. And, clearly, I am not alone. A recent study published by Wharton’s Aresty Institute for Executive Education cites that “most CEOs consider themselves and their organizations largely ineffective at implementing change.” The study cites the failure rate for initiatives at almost 60 percent, with just 61 percent of CEOs reporting that they managed change well in past projects. The study also reveals that the percentage of CEOs who expect substantial change climbed to 83 percent.
So, if 83% percent expect the change, 61% feel that they manage well to change, why then is the failure rate(60%) still so high?
And, for a project manager like myself – who manages to a carefully laid out plan, where change requests are actually integrated into the plan, and whose success hinges on bringing projects to positive completion, where is the delineation between flexibility and fallibility – both in projects and in life….?
Interestingly enough, the answer to that and the CEOs’ high failure rate problem are much alike…
Expecting change is not just an emotional connection, it must be tactical, too - whether you see the change coming or not, experience tells you it will come, so know how you will deal with it. Develop change management procedures and coping mechanisms which can be widely adopted regardless of circumstance. Wharton Professor of Management Sigal Barsade notes, “Even as executives realize they’re not effective at implementing change, they continue to approach new initiatives with the same methods they used in the past. ” Hello, definition of insanity calling….
Understand change – I don’t care how many people actually admit to it or not, but NOBODY LIKES CHANGE. And we are pre-programmed to berate ourselves when we find that our involuntary reactions to change invoke feelings of instability (reference first paragraph, last sentence of this very blog!) Be it positive or negative, change can evoke excitement, happiness, anxiety, anger, denial, sadness, frustration – whether we want/allow it. And, more often than not, we cannot do a darn thing about the change other than to….
Accept and Adapt - And herein lies the simple answer to my original question, which was fraught with complexity and frustration: “Where is the delineation between flexibility and fallibility ..?” Change WILL happen, so accept that, and flexibility will follow. Be prepared for change, whether it is by building float into your schedule, reviewing lessons learned from the past before embarking on new/repeated initiatives, or invoking coping mechanisms. Change is not synonymous with a disastrous ending, it’s simply a re-start – so learn techniques to adapt, be flexible within those adaptation techniques, and failure will no longer be in your forecast.
Perhaps you cannot predict change, but we can all predict how we behave in its wake.
Wishing You Success,
Natalya
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