Make Change Work

In your relationship to change, are you more a dodo bird or a coyote? The dodo bird couldn’t adapt to the arrival of predators in its island habitat and rapidly became extinct. Conversely, coyotes managed to leave their desert plains and take advantage of nearby human communities. Omnivorous and accustomed to all sorts of climates, 1,000 to 2,000 coyotes live in the city of Chicago!

The author recognizes that few people adopt change spontaneously. He notes in particular that 50 to 80 % of people who have experienced warning signs of heart trouble don’t change their lifestyle, though their health is at stake. So it’s easy to imagine what people do when it comes to adopting a new IT system! It is thus important for executives and managers to position themselves as change leaders to elicit real engagement, whereas they are sometimes content simply overseeing the process.

How can they do this? The author suggests an idea to explore: stop talking about change, but instead talk about continuous transition. The latter concept corresponds more closely to our experience and stresses the need to integrate change in our daily lives, and not just when something is no longer working.

One of the valuable nuggets in this book is the list of the seven types of resistance encountered most frequently: from the “Mr. Know-it-all” who saps your presentations to the “Nit-Picker” who unfailingly challenges the least approximation, you may have a sense of déjà-vu! Fortunately, the author suggests helpful ways to manage these various obstacles.

A book aimed principally at readers seeking an initial synthetic approach to change management.