Jarlath Duffy - Change from Within

Some argue that a way around this paradox is to manufacture a sense of crisis, rather than wait for the "real" one to appear. This crafting of urgency presumably elicits a responsiveness to change while not placing the organisation at risk. The danger of this approach is in crying wolf. Claim too many times that survival is at stake and the organisation will greet you with "This, too, shall pass."

When to change, thus, involves an exquisite sense of timing: have we waited too long or have we started too soon? The challenge is to choose the time when the organisation both should make changes and can do so. However, those two dimensions don't always come together - hence, the challenge.

Implementing Change

When people think about change, they often picture designing a bold new change strategy- complete with stirring vision- that will lead an organisation into a brave new future. And, in fact, this crafting of a visionary strategy is a pivotal part of the process of change. But even more challenging-and harder to get a grasp on- is what follows the strategy and the vision: the implementation process itself. When it comes to the daily, nitty-gritty, tactical, and operational decision making of change, the implementer is the one who makes or breaks the program's success.

Of course, the implementer doesn't act alone. Change succeeds when an entire organisation participates in the effort. An organisation can be divided into three broad action roles: change strategists, change implementers, and change recipients, and each of these roles plays a different key part in the change process. Change strategists, simply put, are responsible for the early work: identifying the need for change, creating a vision of the desired outcome, deciding what change is feasible, and choosing who should sponsor and defend it. And change recipients represent the largest group of people that must adopt, and adapt to, the change. These are the institutionalisers, and their behaviour determines whether a change will stick.

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