Risk and Change Management
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009“without risk there is no profit”
This is an interesting argument and one that does stack-up. The other interesting perspective is how Risk is typically always seen as a negative, yet profit is clearly positive. The Strategic Advantage class today was on Risk and Risk Management. This is something I am very familiar with from Vehicle Dynamics where you are often testing and developing vehicles, at their absolute limits, and where they are, more often than not, far from highly finished examples of automotive creation – some of the beasts created when I worked at Aston Martin and at Jaguar were just that! I have always found myself to be comfortable with higher levels of risk (racing, snowboarding etc) so it was good to hear the positive side of risk too for a change.
“people don’t resist change, they resist being changed”
Change Management had another great lecture on Monday. I was in discussion with some of my colleagues and we just can’t understand why it is not a core module (unlike the modelling module where the general consensus is that it should definitely be an elective!) Everything in business life is changing all the time, even if this week we were being asked to consider managing stability i.e. to not always assume that change is necessary. Companies are made up of people, of individuals and just assuming that the implementation of a change is trivial, however important the specific change is from your perspective, is to be grossly underestimating the task at hand. Companies are set up to operate efficiently within known parameters and so changing the status quo is often a challenge, especially if influential people are comfortable with things as they are (influential people does not just mean someone more senior either!)
Perhaps implementing change will be easier in this period of recession, as there is a higher fear of losing jobs, but even then people won’t be pushed around. Having the right approach will be key, especially in companies where there is already “change fatigue.” It is a slight shame therefore that only 12 of the 80 students are sitting change management this term; I am glad I am one however.
In all that melee of activity however, I was kindly recommended to watch 
Management of Change is the other module for Monday and it is also looking very interesting. The Ice Cubes being an indication of the theory (from 1940′s) that suggests the connection with unfreezing, changing and then refreezing as basis theory for managing change – I could certainly have done with some unfreezing this morning at 7am !
