Change Is In The Air

It seems like everywhere you look these days you see something about change. In the political arena we are hearing it nightly. It is in the paper everyday, on the news each night. It seems like light speed on the Internet. Our climate is changing. The economy is changing; we are suddenly part of a global marketplace. Even the style of our clothes seems to be constantly changing, what our jeans look like, for example - boot cut, flare, straight leg, low waist, high waist. You can hardly keep up.

Change is everywhere but most often people say they hate it. They don't like it at work. They don't like it in the places they worship. We hardly like it at home, even when we are responsible for it! But change is as natural as nature. The leaves change colors, the snow falls, the rains come, the earth begins to bloom, the sun shines and, don'tcha know, we get older each and every day. Some change happens to us and some change we can create it. Either way changes happens. If fact, if we weren't changing, we'd be dead!

That's why I say that one of the most important jobs a leader has in any organization is learning how to create positive change. So, what do we need to know as we embrace, leverage, navigate, and create change in the places we work, live and play? There are hundreds of books written about how to create positive change. I have found this formula to be particularly helpful:

Dissatisfaction + Vision + Action Steps > Cost of Change

This formula can help you evaluate where your organization is right now: What is it that people are dissatisfied with? Do they have a vision for what things might look like if changes happens? What steps do you need to take together to reach that vision? Have you counted the cost and determined that these things, together, are greater than what you will lose if the change occurs?

This formula can also help you strategize for what you need to do next in order to help create positive change in your organization: You may need to clarify your vision...really see what life will be like if the change you're working toward happens. Maybe you can already totally see what the change would produce, but you don't know what steps to take to get there...focus on putting together a plan. Maybe people just aren't dissatisfied enough. In that case, your job might be to be a "pain!" Ask purposeful questions that agitate people and poke a little at their comfortableness. Maybe you need to spend time counting the cost; ask whether the price of change is more than you are willing to pay.

In our public life these days, the dissatisfaction with how things are seem to be pretty great. We even seem to think that, this time around, a vote cast will be a step worth taking. And the cost of change seems to be pretty low. The biggest question I have is whether or not we as a people have a vision for what a new day would look like.

What's going on in the organization you care about?

Comments

[Don McClure]

OK I'm confused. I read your "particularly helpful" formula and the text around it several times, but it's not clear at all (and thus not helpful at all) to me. Perhaps I am being to much of a techie, but for me items in an equation like this have to have a common set of units. Specifically how exactly does "What people are dissatisfied with" compare with "having a vision for change (a question with a Yes or No answer)" compare with "the steps needed" and a "cost of change." I look forward to your help, because I am all for purposeful change based on missional planning.

[Kelly Fryer]

The bottom line is that, in order for change to occur, three things need to be true: people have to be unhappy with the way things are, they have to see a compelling picture of the future if change happens, and they have to have take concrete steps to get there. These things together have to be greater than the cost of change, whatever that is in any particular situation. We have found this "formula" to be a very easy way for laypersons (i.e., non-techies) like us to use as we evaluate what's going on (and what's missing) in our organizations...and to strategize as we lead change. Try not to overthink it!

[Don McClure]

Got it! Thanks. Part of my confusion was the language: "Have you counted the cost and determined that these things, together, are greater than what you will lose if the change occurs?" I think it could also have said, "greater than what you will lose if the change DOES NOT occur?" The 'cost of not changing' is often a big piece of the "equation," or is that part of the "unhappiness with the way things" are in your model.

If I overthink it, I do so in an attempt to get the full value from it ;-)

Blessings on your work; this site has been a great resource for me.

[Barb McClurg]

This is an insightful article. I would like to know what to do when "programs" are instituted without much prayer or listening or identifying exactly what is wrong. Sometimes we are in such a hurry to "fix" a perceived problem in a vacuum that we only cause more dissatisfaction and frustration.. Our Father is not in such a hurry. Real and abiding transformation takes time.