Change management workshop

‘So, what do we know about change then?’ I slumped forward at my desk. The facilitator’s opening question on a one day seminar on the subject of ‘Change management’ had completely crumpled my slender desire to live through the experience. Through my tightly laced fingers I could see that he had positioned himself meaningfully alongside a flip chart, marker pen quivering with excitement. About 30 minutes later, as a result of some Herculean efforts from my twelve co-participants, we seemed to have established three things about change - that it was Permanent, unPredictable and Personal – to which the facilitator added in his own words and without, as far as I could gather, a trace of irony, ‘Profitable’. I exhaled deeply – no real surprises there then. We then set off on a bewildering powerpoint-driven Cook’s tour of change management models, mantras, matrices and formulas. It was heady stuff. We visited psychometric profiles and highly personal anecdotes, guru proclamations and conjuror’s card tricks, tight S-curves and loose metaphysical metaphors, mind-bending word puzzles and gut-wrenching number sucking. And yet still the change beast clung obdurately to the initial three ‘P’s’ that we had collectively volunteered and which had been so helpfully highlighted on the chart. By lunch time the logic of the fourth ‘P’ had become apparent. ‘So, how can we manage change effectively?’ The afternoon session loomed long and still like a cloudless vista over an imperturbable mountain lake. Once again my heroic companions came to the rescue of our hapless guide. After much felt-tipped action, it transpired that change could be managed through the use of the three ‘C’s’, to wit – communication, communication and communication. Another breakthrough - different people react differently to the prospect of change – large or small, rapid or slow. Apparently it’s all about talking to one another – pleasantly where possible and listening really long and hard. I felt I had done my fair share for one day. Was I any the wiser? Plus Ҫa Change.