The concept of change has been in high visibility lately.  Obama ran on a campaign promising change, one that resonated quite well with people. 

And it should have.  There are a lot of things in politics that desperately require change.  But the promises and the reality ended up in different directions, as is unfortunately normal in politics.  Maybe I will blog about that sometime.

So that, along with some local and personal events, forced me to once again examine change from many levels.

Now, I am no stranger to change, nor am I narrowmindedly dogmatic about change, one way or another.

Some history:  In the Military change was an interesting phenomena.  On one hand you had what we called “the brown shoes”, the old timers who resisted change, seemingly out of nothing more than habit and comfort.  On the other, you had those who were driving change, the least of which was a change in how the Air Force dealt with and evaluated change.  One of many of the programs that reared up somewhere along the way was one called Total Quality Management, or TQM.  TQM was a  business management strategy aimed at driving awareness of quality and process improvement at all levels, instead of just at the top as was the Military norm, in some ways.

It was not easy, nor should it have been.

The problem in the Military was complex.  Sometimes change looked very inviting, and very opportune, but was indeed resisted out of habit, but sometimes, it was resisted out of necessity.

You see, though Military seemed very dogmatic in it’s structure, in a great many cases, it had a very good reason to be so.  In my aircraft maintenance unit, for example, a technical manual was not just a handy maintenance resource, it was critically necessary, and must be followed precisely.  The risk of process deviation was the potential of lives lost.

Don’t believe me?  Ask me how this C141 blew up because the ground crew made a few simple errors in the established process.  Yes, I was there that day, and the write up of that link only tells half the story.  I know the other half.  

And that was just doing ground maintenance.  What if your deviation resulted in a plane crashing during a mission?  Think you have job pressure now?  It’s a sobering thing when your job holds people’s lives at risk.

At the same time, stories of $900 hammers and $12k toilets were making news, while bulky unnecessary procedures were costing untold sums in manpower waste.

So clearly change was needed.  But how? 

The Air Force developed a compromise system:  A process was developed whereby change requests were allowed, at all levels.  I, from my time as an apprentice all way through my Supervisory ranks, could submit a request for a change in process, method or even in procurement and supply, and my requests were evaluated for need, risk and ultimately savings in manpower or cost.  It seemed to me to be the best, most effective solution, and provided me the foundation for my personal philosophy for change which has served me well.

Simply put, when dealing with change, sometimes you have two polar opposites  at play, who embody the absolute worst and most dangerous elements in a business strategy:

1)  Those who demand change, for change’s sake.

2)  Those who resist change for fear of change.

I have never been a member of either group, I prefer the group that evaluates the need for change from a very specific goal:  Improvement.  And in that group we recognize the real goal of TQM:  Continuous improvement.

Continuous improvement is a dynamic process of always examining what you do, how you do it, how you can do it better and whether you need to do it in the first place. 

That takes change to a whole new level.  Instead of focusing on the change, you focus on the goal, and become more proactive and more effective.

That’s where I like it.

So, it came as a surprise to me that recently I was chastised as being resistant to change.  How could that be possible?

It was simple, really.  I asked “why”.

When new changes were proposed, I had the audacity to ask why.   Why are we changing this?  Is this necessary?  What are the benefits?  What are the costs?  Will this make the process easier at the expense of additional risk? 

Here is a secret they don’t like you to know.  Sometimes, changes are bad.  Sometimes changes are not necessary and in fact, they are counterproductive.

In a conversation with the person who had down checked me, I think I did a good job of explaining my philosophy of change versus need and risk, and my desire to continually improve rather than needlessly change, though it didn’t seem to matter, the down check remained.

That to me is the shame.  Why tag me for being obstructionist when I am simply protecting the business from unnecessary risk?  My only conclusion was that I was being evaluated by someone who leaned a little too far toward category one, above.

Otherwise, my asking questions would not have triggered what I felt was an unfair assessment.

After all, if a change is necessary, it should be able to stand against the scrutiny of ‘why’.

One of the disconnects, in my opinion, was that the people who were suggesting the need for change did not fully understand the business they were proposing changes for.   As such, they did not fully comprehend whether there was a need for change, nor did they understand if any of their changes would create unacceptable risk.

It is easy to see this in the political arena.  Some changes are being proposed with the greatest of intentions, but no thought is being given to the cost or consequence.

Someone once said that the only thing consistent is change.  I disagree, but only in degree because the word change should really be growth, development or improvement.  I prefer this look at the subject attributed to Gandhi:

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

I could not agree more.  Continual improvement should be one of our most noble goals.  And when you ask the question “why”, continuous improvement is not only unafraid of the question, it enjoys the answer.  Change for change’s sake, however, tells you to stop asking question and just do it.

And remember the lesson in my blog yesterday about dogma and futility, change can also become a dogma that leads to closed minds and futility.

In summary, change to drive continuous improvement is productive and necessary.  Change for change’s sake, however, is meaningless and even destructive.  I will always strive to be the former.

Just my 2 cents.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS