An old friend from secondary school put his finger on what I hope to achieve with New2change.com, in a way I could never have phrased better myself.
The other day I had a longer meeting with an old friend from school about our lives, our jobs and change management. After our meeting — and after reading my blog article “Where are the change leaders?” — he wrote the following reflection, in which he wished for a change leader in his project. What he didn’t realise was that he was really wishing for more of himself…
“After a pleasant and interesting meeting with Clas Lundhagen over a coffee yesterday, I feel that this article strongly exemplifies what we so often miss.
We become blinded by the technology and the technical solutions; we believe that this is the solution! I am in the middle of, or rather the final stage of, an IT implementation project and can conclude that the resource mentioned here is in fact the most important resource.
Why? Because we work with people. We are creatures of habit and see change as a threat, since we know what we have and how it works, but not how it will turn out. We simply want to protect ourselves, precisely because we don’t understand what the change will mean for us.
I am in no way unique in this work, but I have at least given it some thought — yet from the article I can see that we are miles away from what we could have achieved with a change leader on board.
We have been a little forward-thinking by bringing in a communicator who translates our technical terms into language ordinary people understand; ahead of each sub-project we have held information meetings with Q&A sessions, but these don’t provide all the answers, and not all questions get asked either.
The worry has been considerable, and that is entirely natural given how we have worked — and from the article I can now understand, to a greater degree, what a difference we could have made with a change leader in the project.
Working as a change leader sounds so exciting; it involves so many people with so many different perspectives that the challenges you meet must constantly take on new forms — because we are shaped by the environment we grew up in, which makes us differently sensitive and receptive to change. To succeed with a change effort you first have to bring the managers on board; they should sit in the locomotive and show the way, they must be involved and convinced of the change, because without their positive attitude the slightest hint of doubt can wreck the whole thing and create camps that pull in different directions.
Thank you, Clas!”
In Peter’s reflection he starts by writing about how many IT projects would genuinely need change leaders — because we are creatures of habit and see change as a threat… before gradually pondering the things he himself actually contributed to in his own project.
He makes visible to himself — and to the rest of us — how valuable the communicator was. He reflects on the worry and the Q&A sessions with the staff. He reflects on the value of bringing the managers along. And on how change management is about meeting people with different perspectives and handling the challenges as they come. In my eyes, he is already much of the change leader he is looking for!
I want to thank Peter for his sharing and highlight it here, precisely because he exemplifies what I want to achieve with New2change.com — a watering hole and a source of inspiration for curiously learning more and finding your own drive to lead successful, involving change. So that every manager who drives change does so with a little more insight and better tools than before.
Don’t only look for an external change leader… Start developing your own, inner change leader right now!
Just as Michael Jackson sings in “Man in the Mirror” — change starts with yourself.