Leadership and Change

One of the key characteristics of effective leaders is that they can lead teams and individuals through change successfully.

Change is inescapable; it is increasing in its rate and complexity.  Consider the following points:

•  More new information will be generated this year than in the previous 5000
• A weeks reading from ‘The Australian’ will contain more information than a person would come across in their lifetime in the 1800s
•  The first commercial text message was sent in 1992, in 2012 the numbers of texts sent every day exceeds the total population of the planet
• The ten most in demand jobs in 2012 did not exist in 2004
•  This year there will be 31 billion Google searches per month, in 2006 it was 2.7 billion
•  Today’s students will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38
•  Experts predict that by 2049 a computer will be built that will surpass the computational abilities of the entire human species 

Research has indicated that when change projects fail, they often do so because whilst plenty of time was spent on planning to transition the systems, processes and procedures, not enough attention was paid to the people element of the change process.

Effective leaders understand that whilst people respond to change in different ways at different times, these responses are natural and predictable.  The obvious advantage in knowing this is that both the actual change process and people’s response to the change can be planned for and executed strategically, sensitively and effectively leading to a much more successful change outcome and an engaged workforce.