MANAGEMENT SPECIAL ...............CHANGE MANAGEMENT.. How Things Happen

CHANGE MANAGEMENT How Things Happen  Change is not a choice, says Mikael Krogerus — you either do it or have it done to you     Mikael Krogerus goes back to 2008 when he was contemplating quitting Switzerland's leading daily and working as a freelancer in order to spend more time with his children. Struggling with this decision, he turned to his colleague and friend Roman Tschäppeler, a creative producer, who suggested a visualisation technique he called 'the rubber band model'. "He asked me: What is holding you? What is pulling you? At first glance the method seemed to be a simple variation of the conventional question: 'What are the pros and cons?' The difference: 'What is holding me? / What is pulling me?' are positive questions and reflect a situation with two attractive alternatives. Also, the visualisation made my situation so much clearer to me," says Krogerus, who now freelances for German and Swiss newspapers. This formed the basis for the first book the duo wrote together, The Decision Book. No Pain, No Gain     More recently, they've released the third book in the series, The Change Book: Fifty Models to Explain How Things Happen which is 'a visual travel guide through our time, a compilation of practical models, concrete theories and bold experiments in thinking that explain our world'. "We had a nagging feeling that we ought to challenge status quo. So we started researching on a book about change - from the small and seemingly insignificant changes in our day-to-day lives to the big and almost incomprehensible changes in world history," he says.     Krogerus says that doing this required them to set aside certain preconceived notions, and also revisit how they viewed the basic concept of change. "Basically we had to learn that the concept of being has to be replaced by the notion of becoming. Change is not — like management often makes us believe — a transition from one state to another but rather something that is constantly ongoing. This is best understood, when we look at children: they are constantly changing and developing their views, their attitudes, their skills - nobody would tell a three year old: stay the way you are. Maybe we should look at conflicts, companies, colleagues or challenges like we look at kids: constantly embracing their change."     The one common theme running through the books is visualisation. We think that many topics are better understood if we draw them up instead of write them down. The authors examine various models, including The Monogamy Model, The Swarm Intelligence Model and The Meaning of Life model to explain how change happens and how to deal with it. For instance, The Change Model, pioneered by the late Ketan Lakhani, says change is rarely a painless process. "Change requires movement. Movement causes friction. Friction causes pain. Real change — whether in a private or wider context — requires sacrifice and effort. However in reality, when the management of a company decides to make a change, it is usually other areas that bear the brunt of the pain. So we have to ask ourselves: if we want change, are we prepared to bear the pain that comes with it ourselves?" says Krogerus.     The Change Book proffers some advice on how to deal with change at a very basic level (See Box: Strategies for dealing with change ). To deal with change in your own career, one simple thing to do is remain up to date by teaching yourself new things that might be needed in the future. But at the same time you must remember that whatever your aptitudes or skills, the greatest source of achievement is passion. "If you love doing something, you'll be constantly drawn to get better at it. We have no proof for this thesis, but we strongly believe that it is better to be good at something that you love than to be good at something that you might not like but think will be important in the future," says Krogerus.     The same logic could apply to organisations. As a CEO, it's important to ask yourself what are the company's biggest hurdles and what would it take to get over them. Also, what would happen if the company succeeded in overcoming them, or didn't. "Ask yourself what would you love to do. But also, whether you could adjust to a change in financial circumstances. In other words - what is our idea with half the money," he says. This helps in ascertaining how the business can continue to survive even under changed conditions, whether internal or external.     Perhaps the important aspect of dealing with change is realising that change is not a choice, and neither is pre-emptive action against potential changes. "The idea of preemptive action is, as we point out in the book, a horrible mistake. Change is not a choice. The only choice is: do you do it, or do you have it done to you," say Krogerus.     Most people contemplate pre-emptive action as a means to deal with the uncertainty the future holds. The thought process with most people goes like this: If you don't know stuff, you feel insecure. If you feel insecure, you become indecisive. If you are indecisive, you feel unhappy. But that doesn't help you prepare for change. "It doesn't matter if your field is backgammon, shopping or computer programming: the brain always learns the same way - accumulating wisdom through errors. And once you have accumulated knowledge in one area, you can rely on your emotions. We all benefit from experience. So to become better at change we recommend: Put yourself out there. And then learn from your mistakes. Colin Powell famously said to his intelligence officers after some mistakes in the Gulf War: "Tell me what you know, then tell me what you don't know. And only then tell me that you think." Always keep these three apart," he advises.     The second book in Krogerus' series, The Question Book, was a result of a boring dinner party. "We started to collect funny, thought-provoking questions that we wished someone would have asked us. The star was supposed to be the person answering the questions, not asking them. It has been a great tool for any social situation we have been in ever since," he says.     Strategies for  Dealing with Change Decide on a research strategy: Set yourself boundaries: e.g. one hour of internet research, ask three friends, read one magazine, visit two experts. Limit your options: The paradox of choice goes like this: we think that the bigger the choice, the better our decision. In fact, with a big choice, we spend too much time weighing up the options, so that at the end we may not reach a decision at all. The smaller the choice, the less we expect from the result. The optimal number of options can be visualized with a bell curve: one option is no option, to many is confusing. The appropriate balance of little and too many is the right number of options. Accept 'good enough': Decide on something that meets your basic requirements instead of searching for 'the best'. Don't fear the consequences: 'The consequences of most decisions are not as lasting as we think,' wrote the US psychologist Daniel Gilbert. In the scheme of things, every decision loses importance. Go with your gut instinct: In recent years there has been a lot of research into intuition. Two findings: it seems there is a part of us that knows more than we think we know. And, we tend to be more accepting of wrong decisions that we made intuitively than ones that we spent a long time thinking about. We forgive our heart more than our head. Have someone else choose: We tend to think that we are happier if we take things into our own hands. The opposite is true: Simona Botti from Cornell University has shown in experiments that when we make our own decisions we suffer nagging doubt that we didn't make the best choice. However, if another person decides for us, or if we toss a coin, we are either grateful or - if the outcome is bad - can blame someone else. Don't question your decision anymore. CDET131101