Organizations and people tend to resist change and preserve the status quo.
Accordingly, the first step for driving any transformation is to create an environment that changes the balance between the status quo and the drive to change.
The February Chart: The Change Equation
Any transformation or organizational change is a challenge.
Organizations and people tend to resist change and preserve the status quo.
Accordingly, the first step for driving any transformation is to create an environment that changes the balance between the status quo and the drive to change.
This concept is beautifully demonstrated by what is called "The Change Equation".
The Change Equation was developed by Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher and published in their book ‘Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change‘.
The Change Equation states that in order for change to occur:
Dissatisfaction with the status quo
A clear vision,
And First steps towards the vision
must be greater than
the Resistance to change
Basically, what it means is that we need to create strong momentum for our planned transformation if we want change to happen.
R [Resistance] will always be high, and the deeper the planned change, the higher the value we should assign to R. Therefore D [dissatisfaction from the Status Quo] has to be high enough, and definitely not zero. If people are too comfortable, it will be hard to push for the change. And without a clearly communicated V [Vision] and F [First steps towards this vision], change will not happen.
Commentaires