Most management advice today — whether it’s from books or articles, prescribed in courses or by consultants — says that change is good and more change is better. Advice on how to change varies quite a bit, but it has three features in common: “Creative destruction” is its motto. “Change or perish” is its justification. And “No pain, no change” is its rationale for overcoming a purportedly innate human resistance to change. The overarching goal is to invent a spanking new future ahead of one’s competitors.
Divorcing to remarry, gutting the house to rehab it, downsizing the work-force in order to rehire and ripping apart the organization in order to restructure — these all exemplify the common approach to change these days. And it’s necessary — sometimes. The problem is that this highly destabilizing and painful change-management process has been overprescribed.
Examples of a lemming-like reliance on excessive change are easy to highlight. Consider the reengineering fad of the early to mid-1990s. Then a few years later, new-economy mania led change-pushers to herald Enron Corp. and other “revolutionaries” as companies to emulate. At the far edge of absurdity, the constant emphasis on radical change made a bestseller of Who Moved My Cheese? in which the most successful character learns to be ready, if not eager, to adapt to any and all changes in his food supply.
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