The “Course Topics” series from Manage Train Learn and Slide Topics is a collection of over 4000 slides that will help you master a wide range of management and personal development skills. The 202 PowerPoints in this series offer you a complete and in-depth study of each topic. This presentation is on "The Nature of Change".

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The Nature of Change
Change Management
MTL Course Topics
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
The Nature of Change

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The Nature of Change
Change Management
MTL Course Topics
The Course Topics series from Manage Train Learn is a large collection of topics that will help you as a learner
to quickly and easily master a range of skills in your everyday working life and life outside work. If you are a
trainer, they are perfect for adding to your classroom courses and online learning plans.
COURSE TOPICS FROM MTL
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Change Management
MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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The Nature of Change
Change Management
MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
Organisations, like individuals, only survive as long as they
are aware of, respond to and stay ahead of the changes in
their environments. Not every industry manages to survive;
witness coal and shipbuilding and car industries in the West
in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Making
changes in times of upheaval is not easy. It can be
frightening for both individuals and groups. But times of
change are also times of great opportunity. When managed
well, people can come out the other side of change, not
having just survived, but having surged ahead as well.

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Change Management
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CHANGE MANAGEMENT
The following are definitions of change management:
Change management is the way a living entity - individual,
group or organisation - responds to the external changes in
its environment in order to ensure its survival and
continuing growth.
Change management is the process by which internal
potential and external opportunities are identified, valued,
introduced and implemented to the benefit of the
organisation.
Change management is about managing the future.

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SURVIVAL
The basic aim of any living entity is survival.
Survival is achieved when we manage to stay ahead of the
forces that affect us in our environment.
The foolish person waits until the weather turns cold before
going to the clothes shop to buy winter clothes. It may be
too late and the shop may be sold out.
The wise person sees what is coming and manages change.
"The search for static security - in the law and elsewhere - is
misguided. The fact is, security can only be achieved
through constant change, adapting old ideas that have
outlived their usefulness to current facts." (William O.
Douglas 1898-1980)

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ADAPTATION
Because it is composed of people, an organisation is no
different from any individual in its need to both maintain
itself and survive. It has no God-given right to exist and can
only do so if it adapts.
Charles Darwin said: "It is not the strongest of the species
that survive nor the most intelligent but the ones responsive
to change".
In his book, "The Age of Unreason", Professor Charles Handy
describes a species of frog which, if placed in a container of
warm water will stay there while the water is warmed up.
Eventually, the water will reach boiling point and the frog
will still not move. The frog will finally be boiled alive
because of its inability to react to its surroundings and
change.

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CASUALTIES OF CHANGE
There are many examples of people who fail to respond to
change in time...
1. the executive who fails to keep himself up to date with
the changes in his business and finds himself redundant
in mid-career with obsolete skills and no idea how to
start anew;
2. the trade union official who thinks she's still fighting the
battles of 30 years ago and finds her members are no
longer interested;
3. the young unemployed school leaver who expected a
job like his Dad - only to find that the local traditional
industries had shut down.
What is true of people is also true of organisations.

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THE PRINCIPLES OF CHANGE
The following are seven principles of environmental
change...
1. Change is present in all living environments. In some, it
proceeds at a gradual pace; in others, at a rapid pace.
2. The nature of change is hard to pin down. It can be
detected in people's changing needs and is visible only
when the physical world around us has changed.
3. Rapid change produces unstable environments. Gradual
change produces stable environments.
4. The environment is more powerful than any one
individual or organisation.
5. People can handle change in one of three ways: promote
it themselves, react to it, or work with it.
6. Human beings are immensely resourceful when the need
to change arises.
7. While unstable environments produce greater uncertainty
than stable ones, they also offer greater opportunities for
personal and organisational growth.

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STABLE CLIMATES
Stable environmental climates are preferred by most
organizations. There is greater control and the future can be
predicted with more certainty.
Other features of stable organisations are...
1. unnecessary change is resisted, often successfully
2. all processes are controlled through laid-down
procedures, rules and standards
3. deviation from the rules is punished and conformance
rewarded
4. people are kept in line by fear, blame and divisiveness
5. there is little requirement for personal growth
6. learning is concentrated on the skills to do the job.
In order to succeed in stable climates, organisations need to
manage order, authority and predictability.

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UNSTABLE CLIMATES
Unstable environmental climates are not always easy for
organisations to operate in. Those organisations which have
grown in stable times may not have the means or
understanding to adjust to new conditions.
Features of organisations in unstable climates are...
1. the need to respond quickly to changes
2. the need for new ideas and innovation
3. the courage and readiness to drop old ways
4. a change from control management to forms of
management which empower people
5. an ability to accept uncertainty, upheaval, turmoil,
unpredictability as manageable.
In order to succeed in unstable climates, organisations need
to manage uncertainty, ambiguity and unpredictability.

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ON THE MOVE
It is now widely believed that we are living in times of highly
unstable change. The pendulum has swung from a world of
stability towards one of change.
People are on the move. In recent figures, nearly 1 out of 6
UK employees had been with their employer for less than a
year, and 1 out of 2 for less than 5 years.
And so are organisations. Of the 100 largest American
companies at the beginning of the 1900's, only 16 were still
in existence at the start of the 2000's. Of the 300 biggest UK
industrial companies in The Times' first list of top companies
in 1965, only 32 of them were still there thirty years later.

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HISTORICAL CYCLES
According to some historians there have been two cycles of
change in the Western world during the last 500 years. One
was characterised by the changes brought about by the
Renaissance; the second by the Industrial Age. Both cycles
lasted for about 200 years.
According to the same historians, the Industrial Age in the
West is now in terminal decline to be replaced by a new age,
the Information Age.
Of the 19 million new jobs in the United States created in
the last 20 years of the 20th century, 5% were in manual
work; 11% were in productive work; 84% were in the
thinking, information and communication processes.

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THE INFORMATION AGE
Even in its infancy, we can detect some of the principal
features of the Information Age that we are currently living
in.
1. The new age is discontinuous from the one before, ie it
is not an evolutionary process but a completely new
process.
2. We now expect things to keep on changing and getting
better.
3. Information is at the heart of the changes.
4. Authority is questioned as never before in how we run
our societies through government; how we organise our
beliefs and values; how we learn in educational systems;
how we care for each other; and how we work, make
money and manage each other.
Expectations + information + competition = the pace of
change.

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THE FUEL OF CHANGE
In the distant past, when we lived in close-knit communities
without immediate access to other communities, the
amount of new information we had was limited. Only the
occasional passing traveller might introduce us to news of
how others lived, what others were doing, what others
wanted, what their ideas about life were.
Now we can access this information in a fraction of a
second.
• information, which is news, events, discoveries, re-
discoveries, happenings, changes, fuels...
• ideas, which are thoughts about how things can change
and these fuel...
• innovations which are new ways of doing, new ways of
looking, new ways of thinking.
In its turn, innovation produces yet more information and so
the cycle repeats itself at an ever-quicker rate.

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THE PACE OF CHANGE
Unlike the times of our parents and grandparents, changes
in our lives come with increasing speed.
Most of us can probably find a significant change in our lives
within the last two or three years. This might be a change in
job, a change in where we live, a change in relationships, a
change in lifestyle. It is this pace of change that can
sometimes overwhelm and frighten us, as well as excite and
stimulate us.
At one point in its early years, the market value of
Microsoft, the computer company, surpassed for a time that
of General Motors, the largest car makers in the world. And
yet, despite its phenomenal success, Bill Gates of Microsoft
says that his company is always two years from failure.

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CYCLES OF CHANGE
Eighty years ago, a typical change cycle, for example in how
we travelled, might last for 20 or 30 years before evolving
into something new; for example, horse-drawn vehicles to
steam-driven trains, steam-driven trains to electric trains,
trams to buses, crank-driven cars to electrically-ignited cars.
Our grandparents and great grandparents were likely to
have spent most of their lives in one locality, one job, one
career, one house, with one partner as husband or wife.
They might have experienced one major social change in
their lives every 20 to 30 years.
Richard Foster of the management consultants McKinsey
studied 208 companies over 18 years. Only three remained
as successful at the end of the period as they were at the
start. 53% could not maintain their record for more than
two years.

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CHANGE AND US
Today, we are likely to live not just in many houses and
localities throughout our lifetimes, but increasingly in
countries other than the ones we were born in. We are
likely to move through at least six different kinds of career,
with at least the same number of jobs in each career. We
are likely to have more than one significant personal
relationship. We are likely to experience inventions and
innovations totally un-thought-of even just a few years ago.
"If the motor industry of the 1900's had developed at the
same speed as the computer industry today, we would now
be able to buy a Rolls Royce for £1. It would travel at the
speed of sound and use a thimble of petrol to travel 600
miles." (John Naisbitt: "Global Paradox")

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WHY CHANGE IS FRENETIC
There are five key factors which explain the frenetic pace of
change in our world.
1. Competition In A Global Marketplace. No organisation
can rest on its laurels in today's competitive marketplace; it
can only survive by being willing to adapt.
2. Customer Demands. We now expect the things we buy to
get better and better.
3. Education. Young people are now generally more
informed and better educated than ever before. 80% of all
managers in the UK are under 45.
4. Employee Expectations. People in work are beginning to
look for more from work than just a job. The old command-
and-tell styles of managing no longer provide them with
what they are looking for.
5. The Accessibility Of Information. When anyone can
access information, change is no longer the prerogative of
the elite; it can be accessed by anyone.

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A TIME OF CHAOS
In times of stability, we raise defensive barriers to impose
order and structure on how we live. This was the way of the
militaristic Roman Empire, the bureaucratic British Empire
and the dogmatic Soviet Empire. In times of change, the
barriers come down. When there are no barriers we are
influenced by anything and everything. It is a time of chaos.
Chaotic times are characterised by...
1. Both sudden change and creeping change.
2. A lack of certainty about what we know.
3. The need for coping skills and continuous learning.
4. Management of ourselves and others that is humane
not dogmatic, helping not enforcing, and humble not
punitive.
5. A taste for the crazy, the absurd, the unexpected, the
contradictory, the new, and the ironic.

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THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT
In 1960 meteorologist Edward Lorenz was employed at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create models of
weather patterns. He wrote simplified equations using data
on wind speed, air pressure, and temperature and entered
them on a primitive computer.
Day after day, his results produced effects that were a lot
like real weather. Then one day, being in a hurry, Lorenz
decided to take a short cut in the data he was entering; he
rounded the numbers up to the nearest thousandth,
expecting that this wouldn’t make any difference to the
outcomes. However, the results in weather patterns were
profoundly different from the results if he hadn’t made the
change.
Lorenz realised that very small changes, even down to a
change in a breath of air, can make a huge difference to the
resulting weather patterns. From this discovery, Lorenz
developed chaos theory that is often paraphrased as: "The
beating of a butterfly's wings in New Zealand can change
the climate of the world."

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THE THREATS OF CHANGE
Change brings with it both opportunities and threats. Even
high-tech organisations and giants of the past are not
immune.
In 1991, BT, the former British Telecom, employed 250,000
people in the UK, 1% of the nation's workforce. Now it
employs 110,000, less than half that number. On one Friday
in July 1992, 20,000 people alone left the company through
voluntary redundancy.
"My father worked for the same firm for twelve years. They
fired him. They replaced him with a huge gadget. It does
everything that my father does, only it does it much better.
The depressing thing is, my mother ran out and bought
one." (Woody Allen)

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RESPOND TO THE FUTURE
Nobody can predict the future, but in a time of change,
everyone can influence it. Or, as a sign in the offices of 3M
Canada has it, everyone can "Respond to the Future.“
Writer John Naisbitt sees our age as one of transition, filled
with opportunity. In stable eras, he argues, ordinary people
can leverage little; but in times of change, they have a rare
opportunity to leverage a lot.
On the other hand, the future could be bleak. Tongue-in-
cheek, Warren Bennis, Professor of Business Administration
at the University of Southern California, offers this scenario
of the future: "The factory of the future will have only two
employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed
the dog. The dog will be there to stop the man from
touching the equipment."

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THE BREAKING GLASS
The Buddhists teach that, to understand and accept the
inevitability of change, we need to see "the glass as already
broken". In other words, we need to accept that, in time,
everything that is made will be unmade and everything that
works now will stop working. In time, a simple product like a
glass will disintegrate and fall to dust. Nothing stays the
same and we must accept it.
Charles Handy tells the story of how former American
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, when President of
Columbia University, received a deputation of students
asking for a pathway across the grass.
"Why do they walk there?" he asked.
"It's the easiest way to the hall," came the reply.
"Well, if that's the way they're going to go, then cut a
pathway there," he said.

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NOTHING LASTS FOR EVER
"It does not astonish us or make us angry that it takes a
whole year to bring into the house three great white
peonies and two pale blue iris. It seems altogether right and
appropriate that these glories are earned with long patience
and faith... and also that it is altogether right and
appropriate that they cannot last.
Yet in our human relations, we are outraged when the
supreme moments, the moments of flowering, must be
waited for... and then cannot last. We reach a summit, and
then have to go down again."
(May Sarton)

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Change Management
MTL Course Topics
THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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Change Management
MTL Course Topics
THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn