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February 23, 2005

Change and Management

Managing change is always a critical capability, yet is it always an important practice? Consider the idea that things can have a distinction without a difference. For example, if moving to a point two steps to the left gives no "better" point of view, then a distinction without a difference has been achieved. This helps to point out that if there is no point to the difference, then there may be no need to manage the change that creates the difference.

The punchline is that managing difference , as opposed to just managing distinctions, is the essential purpose of managing change. Put differently, change management manages for value -- meaning, the significance of the difference.

For example, pursuit of an opportunity or avoidance of a risk represents basic motives for change management. In practice, when "significant" transformations of a current state can be consistently anticipated and purposefully controlled, Change itself becomes "manageable".

In management terms, the value represented by the significance may be positive or negative, since the value is determined by comparing the result of the transformation to either the prior current state or a currently desired state. Generically, this value assessment identifies positions along three dimensions:
(a.) the intended/unintended;
(b.) the expected/unexpected; and
(c.) the planned/unplanned.

According to the locations foreseen or detectable within that 3-D space for any event, the practical roles of anticipation and control are defined, scoped and scheduled (thereby spawning requirements for related policies, processes, tools, and so on). But this organization of roles happens only because the various locations in that 3-D space are seen as being
(x.) preferable to some degree,
(y.) tolerable to some degree, or
(z.) inevitable to some degree.

Consequently, in acknowledging this second 3-D space that characterizes or "measures" the locations within the first space, we can see that change management is where value and risk are managed together -- making change management always essentially strategic -- whether it is being practiced at the level of operational commitments, or tactical selections, or strategic planning.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at February 23, 2005 8:42 AM

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