The Insidious Sameness of Change
I have the great good fortune and honor to be working with a number of CEOs, primarily in employee-owned companies, talking with them about what is different in an employee-ownership environment as compared to other venues. But while every company is different in its particular industry, products and strategies, there are certain threads that run through every one of these firms and probably every other company in the world. The longest and strongest thread is likely the one that reads, “change.”
Every business person and employee in America has been bombarded with the litany of “change,” the need to recognize it, embrace it, create it, not be afraid of it, to leverage it, seek it, lead it, follow it, accept it. It’s arguably the most talked about workplace issue of the past 20 years, with no visible slowdown in sight. A quick check of the Harvard Business Review alone reveals that articles on change currently number over 2 million. Are we obsessed with this notion of change or what? Is there anyone in the business community who isn’t familiar with the absolute need for flexibility, chameleon-like responsiveness to customers and youthful dexterity in meeting the fast pace of the marketplace?
It’s an important lesson, this call to changeability. In fact, it always has been a cardinal rule of life that we need to be shaped in new ways according to the circumstances and environments in which we find ourselves. We simply never seemed to heed the rule very well until more recent times, as the marketplaces in which we function began to demand compliance. And it’s true: whenever our economics are affected, we take notice of a thing.
So as I chat with CEOs and inevitably the topic of change creeps into the conversation, I’ve begun to notice something noteworthy and troubling. I am beginning to hear an almost perfunctory homage paid to the importance and need for change, followed by few examples or change fact sets facing these leaders. It’s as if change obstacles have become so common as to warrant little attention other than acknowledgement of their existence. Conversation quickly moves on to operational issues or age-old quality complaints. In five separate conversations with corporate leaders last week, I broached the topic of change with each. In each case, the CEO agreed to the importance of change in the organization, acknowledged the difficulty in helping employees understand and deliver the needed renovation, and then quickly moved on from the topic. We’ve apparently become tired of talking about the old familiar challenge of change.
The irony of these observations, if they’re representative of the thinking of a broader leadership population, is that we have perhaps dulled the creative thinking of leaders through a steady drumbeat signalling the threat of change. Its omnipresence makes this issue seem as though it is being addressed successfully simply by its frequency of mention. In short, we have talked so long of the issue that we have become comfortable with it. It’s no longer a fear of the unknown, because we have described it and analyzed it until it has joined us in the comfort zone. And we all intellectually, anyway, recognize the dangers of the comfort zone. We are not entitled to sidestep the realities of change simply by repeating the word often.
Change is not some new phenomenon that we never anticipated. It’s a fact of our lives that is born out in everything we do, every day. If one doubts that persistence, simply look in a mirror and then find a picture of that same person five years, ten years, twenty years ago. If I am to fully acknowledge and respect the reality of change in my work and life, then I am obligated to do so every day. Can I name that outlook today that differs from before? Can my co-workers recognize what new presence they have brought to their work? Today, can the leaders of my organization cite the perspectives with which they have ignited the company, its people and its clientele once again? The effectiveness of confronting change in any organization is reflected in the daily immediacy with which it is addressed. If the answers to the above questions are “no,” then change within those organizations is little more than the most recent, interesting buzzword of business, no matter how frequently it’s mentioned.
I’m always attracted to ironies; the contradictions represented in them are a fascination. The ironic realities surrounding most of our organizational relationships to change these days are no less intriguing, even if they are more frightening. If we cannot recognize their importance, perhaps we can hope that other organizations will be as tentative as our own.
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