The One Constant: Change
Brian W. Pascal
If there's one
thing that I’ve learned over many years in management and Human Resources, even before it was called HR, it is to expect change. It is the one constant in life, in work and in business. There really is no standing still. No coasting either. You are either moving forward or falling back. Even what we think are stationary objects are moving, we just can’t perceive it. Like the building you are sitting in right now. It is shifting slightly all the time but you can’t feel it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t changing.
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Brian W. Pascal
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What I’ve also learned is that we can manage change or plan to deal with it, but we cannot avoid it or prevent change from happening. The great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov probably said it best:
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.”
Asimov was talking science fiction, but also the reality of modern life and of our life at work. The question is how are we managing the change that has already happening and preparing for the next wave of change?
First of all, there’s planning, now called strategic planning to make us or the consultants we hire, sound smarter. Planning is about predicting the future, one year, five years, one business cycle after another. But you can’t even call that managing change. It’s a plan to cope with what we think is inevitable.
Then, there’s the ostrich approach, which despite its decades of failure is still in vogue. Why else would we still be investing billions of dollars into aging auto plants that produce combustion engine vehicles? As a short-term strategy it’s brilliant, as people line up to buy the new Ford 150. But planning? Nope. It’s pretending the world will stay the same even as the planet shifts in an entirely different direction.
So what are we do about change? The simplest answer is to accept that it is coming and try and set aside some resources so that you won’t get swamped by it. No, accept that it is here and deal the best you can with it now. Or you can buy a crystal ball and spend your days and nights trying to predict the next wave of change. Good luck with that.
One more quote on change on a survival expert, Charles Darwin. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
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