Leading change is not the same as managing change. The former is about drive, vision, empowering lots of people, transformation and accepting an element of ambiguity. Managing change is about detailed execution, control and minimising disruption. A respected researcher and author on the subject, Professor John Kotter, tells us that most organisations spend most of their time ‘managing change’ and not ‘leading change’, which will become an issue in the future.
We all know that change is a constant. This doesn’t make leading and managing it any easier. Many of us human beings ‘resist’ change – which is probably why, according to popular research, as many as 50% of major change initiatives fail. Recent research and understanding highlights that change is emergent. Fixed plans simply don’t work anymore. Contextual and agile approaches do.
