Management of Change

Management of Change: Reflection 1

The course began from a very pertinent question, "What made me choose this course?"

When I chose this course, what I had in mind was that there are several changes that an organization on a large scale or a team in an organization faces on fairly regularly intervals. Some of these changes can be planned and some changes are unplanned. So, how to manage these changes? Guidance to this question is what I thought a manager should have. Hence it made me take this course.

As the course begins we are faced with our first question, what comes first, Change or Stability? A very simple yet complicated question. This particular question I can directly relate one of my personal experiences where few years I took it upon myself to change my attitude towards life from negative to a positive one. And there I first felt that stability in my attitude was the first thing I required to initiate any sort of change. This may not apply to every situation but yes stability is as important as change. While learning the concepts of Management of Change, we learned that for any target system be it an individual or an organization some aspects change at a faster pace and some at a slower pace. It is equally important to identify the aspects that need greater stability which in the case of the organization include the core of the organization.

To further dig into the process of how change takes place we find that that is basic three staged process that is followed:-

1) Unfreezing

2) Changing

3) Refreezing

Unfreezing indicates creating a situation of disconformities or sometimes an individual or an organization itself is in a discomfort with the situation. The process of unfreezing is much easier in the former case and this I can relate to my above mentioned experience where I felt a discomfort with my negative attitude and felt a strong need for change. We learned that this disconfirmation often leads to two types of anxieties, Learning anxiety and Survival anxiety. If the learning anxiety is more than the survival anxiety the individual in an organization often end up leaving the organization but if the case is otherwise individual often end up learning and makes the necessary change. But the survival anxiety beyond a certain point is also bad for the individual. And these sorts of anxieties I can relate my job in a sales firm where I saw my colleagues facing such situation when they were unable to meet their targets.

Then comes the second stage where the changing actually takes place. In my experience of a sales firm where such anxieties are faced by the individual, he tries to learn new ways to sell more products and try to identify and imitate their role models which in my case was our sales