Why “Managing Change” is NOT The Future of Work

Managing change is not the way forward to the future of work.

The speed and rapidity of technological innovations means that a change management approach is not fast enough or agile enough for the current and future business realities.

Managing change is often applied as a reactionary approach whereas leading change is the proactive and ongoing movement to a new level of structure, systems and ways of interacting.

The future of work requires more of a future focused ‘change leadership’ approach not a predominant change management approach.

Any aspect of the business that needs to be transformed can only be shifted when looking through the lens of ‘reorganization’.  The context of the word ‘reorganizational’ being used here is that there is a constant focus on bringing current realities up to remarkable outcomes.

Managing change is a ‘restorative’ approach in that the focus is on dealing with the problems created by change or focusing on mitigating the risks of change.

So how do we shift from a ‘change manager’ approach to a ‘change leader’ approach?

In my book, “The Art of Change Leadership – Driving Transformation In a Fast Paced World” I provide a chart that shows the merits of a change management approach at certain stages of growth and also the change leadership approach which is what will take organizations to the future of work.

The key to being in a change leader approach the majority of the time is to ask the following questions:

1. Am I consistently looking to learn and share what I know with my teams?
2. Am I resisting the current change (s) and if so why?
3. Are we as an organization moving two steps forward and one step back? Why?
4. Have we engaged everyone in the company to be ‘change leaders’?
5. Are we reacting to changes the majority of the time?

The whole paradigm of dealing with organizational change is being turned on its head right now. Change leaders are those that have the ability to ‘predict’ responses to changes or shifts. Rather than two steps forward and one step back a change leader focuses on two steps forward, three steps forward and so on.