Three tips (plus one) to drive change in your company
There are many business cases where organisational change has been difficult, time-consuming, opposed, misunderstood and sometimes totally rejected. Here are some suggestions for how best to handle it
3' min read
3' min read
The world of training and consultancy is characterised by recurring trends, fashions and narratives; cyclically, some topics enter the agendas of organisations, either out of real need or to satisfy a need for homologation, while others leave or end up in the shadows.
On the other hand, certain contents, including the evergreen change, remain constantly in vogue in the organisational debate. If, as Heraclitus postulated in early times, 'the only constant is change', then it makes sense for companies and organisations to continually question themselves on how to meet the challenge of change and evolution.
But when we move from theory to cruel practice, there are many business cases, famous or not, in which organisational change has been difficult, time-consuming, opposed, misunderstood and sometimes totally rejected. In this sense I share an experience I have personally lived.
In the recent past, I facilitated, for the sales management of a major industrial group, a series of workshops to support a change programme that contemplated the adoption of a new mindset and a series of operational innovations, including order management software. The new management software would have brought many advantages: a more efficient classification of customers, greater control over the level of service offered, an immediate reading of the profitability of the individual order/customer, and, once familiar with the system, faster order entry. In summary, the sacrifice required, learning to use the new management system and thus changing one's habits, was far less than the benefits it would bring. In practice, however, adoption was neither natural nor accepted by everyone. I remember, in particular, that one of the salespeople most resistant to the project refused to use the new system and continued with his personal modus operandi of sending orders via the Jurassic Fax, much to the chagrin of change and innovation.
Because change is difficult and exhausting. By its very nature, the human being tries to escape all forms of pain and would spend its existence lounging in the comfort zone.
