The times they are a changing
The lyrics of rock music have always reflected the energy and rebellious mood of many young people. The 1960’s were a decade of considerable social change and when Bob Dylan released “The Times They Are a Changing” it became adopted as an "anthem for the protest movement."
Come gather round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a 'changin'
Well I don’t know about you, but I think the lyrics above have a certain resonance with Business Change. To persist momentarily with the musical analogy Status quo may be fine (for some) on the CD player (sorry that’s now changed to an IPOD) but for most businesses it is a luxury that erodes competitive edge. To stand still means you will sink like a stone – for business is changing faster than ever.
How easier the pace of Change must have been for our forefathers who made the transition from toiling as Hunters to Farmers and then onto the new growth mode of Industry during the 19th century. Informed research tells us that each of these growth modes accelerated at over 100 times faster than the first. Hunters took 230,000 years to double their productivity, Farmers 860 years and now Industry is taking 15 years. For Industry, electricity was the fundamental grandfather of innovations that spawned the semi-conductor and led to a total reform of the global economy. Dylan wrote his prophetical lyrics at the same time as the semi-conductor sparked a transition to a new growth mode where, within this century, we may yet see doubling time measured in weeks and not years.
In 0.25 seconds Google will return to you 614,000,000 results to a web search for the term ‘Business Change’. If doubling times proceed as predicted, the same search when performed in 2065 will be out of date before you have began reading. Unnerved? Well you should be, after all the only person who really likes change is a wet baby. But crucially, all change becomes less frightening to us when it is managed. Change Management prevents us from running businesses blind, sliding into catastrophe and reeling from shock when the unforeseen happens. In the 21st century successful managers need to have one hand firmly on the management of risks with the other pressed to the pulse of business change.
Making this statement is the easy bit – as always it is the delivery that really matters because business change means taking action and action is never straightforward particularly when it is discontinuous and unlike anything that you have undertaken before. Try as we might to pre-empt and mitigate where we can or delimit and exclude where we ought, business change always introduces risks beyond reasonable control that contradict well honed theories of probability. After all Murphy’s Law sits alongside Moore’s Law as the other incontestably proven business rule - “If anything can go wrong it will”. And it does with alarming regularity and will continue to do so whilst organisations seek the change management silver bullet.
Whilst intelligence quotients and change management capabilities will have greatest influence upon all change outcomes, the primary driver of much of this change has been technology. In the last decade the transition to a digital economy has been significantly and materially different from anything that any of us have encountered before. During the final few years of the 1990’s an e-Business supportive media bombarded firms with rhetoric about the need for change. e- Commerce growth was predicted to increase exponentially in 2001 accelerating into 'hyper growth' by 2004. E-Business we were all told would have a transformational impact on a par with the steam engine, electricity and telegraphic communications. By 2005 ‘everyone would be an Internet firm or they would not be a firm at all’. Well that’s one prediction that proved to be slightly out, albeit not as far out as it appeared at the start of 2001.
Expensive mistakes were made as investors who should have known better, abandoned long-standing business fundamentals. Inexperienced Dot.Com firms were urged to move with reckless speed to achieve specific targets that were well beyond them, burning money and resources too quickly. Boom turned to bust as the Dot.Com bubble imploded. The economy burnt but at the same time a generation of managers learned lessons that left them better prepared to face the next round. And we need to be, because this current wave of technological change is not over yet. A much shorter second wave has arrived where e-Businesses have returned to basics emulating the flexibility and cost consciousness of traditional bricks and mortar firms. Perversely, in a world where firms high on competitive adrenaline changed too quickly, those who moved more cautiously, have benefited most alongside the pioneering survivors of the internet boom. A decade of hard earned e-Business experience has produced valuable learning lessons that are now being exploited.
As Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”. Responsive and responsible businesses have sought to limit the potential damage created by inflexible and predictable management behaviour, by injecting agile methods and structured processes into their modus operandi. Six Sigma may be a relatively new brand but it’s heritage and tool-kit drawn from Total Quality Management, Business Process Re-engineering and O&M stand the test of time and are being devoured by an audience hungry to innovate and manage change within coherent, structured programmes.
Benefits Realisation, Six Sigma, Knowledge Management, CRM are all part of the organisational tool-kit that help us to manage cycles of business change. I was delighted to be asked to feature in Change.jobs and look forward to contributing some of my own views and opinions on the aforementioned in future editions of Casebook. I would like to congratulate Sarah and her team on their debut and trust that you will join me in adding Change.jobs to your Favourites folder.
Dr. John Saunders is a Director of JSA. Dr. John Saunders is Director of JSA, a company which provides information technology & management consulting services to clients. He has over 30 years experience in Information and Business Management.
John has spent considerable time in the Insurance sector assisting London Insurance Market organisations such as the former LIMNET Ltd and WISE (now merged into ACCORD and Xchanging). In the same period he worked outside the insurance industry for clients such as National Westminster Corporate Bank, Equant and Reuters. He has recently been assisting the public sector organisation Sport England.
He was previously a member of the operating boards at Insurance Technology Solutions and at HSA Personal Medical Plans. He has a broad range of industry sector experience, having held senior positions in Accident & Health, Large Scale Insurance, Professional Services and Retail.
He is an accomplished public speaker and has authored several published reports concerning e-business in the insurance sector. He is an MBA and Doctor of Management where his thesis research assessed the impact of e-business upon management best practices within professional risk services. He can be contacted at
