Hopes Alive in Change Management

Through our strategy workshops we try to unite people in action (build social capital).  We are able to do that, but we find it difficult to sustain the initiatives undertaken as part of the program (especially the customer visits and new market identification). People have

a tendency to relapse into their individualistic approach to jobs, and they remain operations focused than business focused.  We are very much aware that a poorly led change initiative can inflict disorder on a business unit or the entire company. Sluggish initiatives can breed sarcasm and damage the top management’s and our credibility, and can jeopardize future change initiatives. We are very concerned in preventing change failures. 

Failed initiatives have happened in some of our facilitation midway. As we are a research based consulting, we delved deep into the issues related to initiatives and improved our delivery systems to overcome the inertia of change. In the process of analyzing the cause for change-initiative failures, we also recognized that the business leader’s courage matters most in making the change successful.  There is no substitute for this ingredient, and we have to depend on the leadership level of the client company. Places where we have strong leadership at the top, our strategy facilitation is smoother.   Resilience, patience and trying out until the goal is reached, are the three attributes we expect or want from the top team to implement changes in business strategy.  We are constantly working on developing and nurturing these characteristics in our client’s team.  Even a small breakthrough in change management can give tremendous outcomes.  . We recognize that  leading initiatives is not easy,  but we have identified a few effective principles, that change initiatives stand to  survive the most common vulnerabilities. That is emerging as our strength. 

Contributed by Sasikanth R Prabhu, Marg Atreya

Any business team always can win

Just now Common Wealth Games (CWG) in India is finished and there were some excellent competition among teams.

The two test matches between India and Australia were too excellent and India emerged the winner.

In sports, teams engage in a fierce competition and one team usually wins the game and there are one or more losers. The winning and performance in sports give thrills to the spectators, organisers and to the players. In the end one team feel elated by their win and the losers feel depressed.

The team- work in sports is a coordinated activity of individuals to reach the desired goal / performance. Because of the amazing effect the group of people in sports and games bring to the performance and results, the metaphor of team is borrowed to the business / organisational context too.

But it is to be noted that the metaphor of team has different connotations. In war and sports the team is meant to win over the opponent. There is always an opponent to be subdued.

But in business it is not so. A win-win outcome can always be crafted. But we are illusioned to think that in business too we need to pursue a win-lose end. In actuality it is a win-win game. This is the most simple but significant distinction between a business team and other teams. Business is more a cooperation / win-win game

Business is about creation of wealth or creation of value. And a team is required to achieve this goal. An apparent competition exists among the similar business organisations in capturing the value from the limited set of customers, which is called market. Every organisation wants to gain maximum / more from the defined market than the other players. In that race a fierce competition is seen. But if you observe everybody gains from the market and, some organisations gain relatively more.

Business is a positive sum game, (not a zero sum game or a negative sum game as in sports). The teams are meant always to win and all players can also be winners.

There are certain principles to be followed in business. By adopting them any team can win

Wishing all a business win.

Contributed by Sasikanth R Prabhu