REINVENTION

REINVENTION

_Business mogul, Philanthropist, world’s wealthiest and Computer Programmer, Bill Gates encapsulates it as Business @ the Speed of Thought; Reengineering guru, Michael Hammer, rephrases it as change is now happening exponentially; Systems guru, Peter Senge describes it as, we are, by any technical definition, operating out of control; Organisational and Social Development guru, Charles Handy hits it thus, you can’t stumble backwards into the future. As the presidential election approaches in Nigeria, most of her citizenry are echoing it. It is CHANGE - the most constant phenomenon; the defining attribute of the early 21st century.

Young World Leaders presently gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland grapple to deal with the effect of climate and social change on the world’s economy amongst other discourses.  People, leaders try to reinvent themselves to become more productive. Organisations rework their stratagem to fit or maximise a perceived trend or better still, to attain a new height of influence and relevance. However, leading changes in an organisation entails that a leader bear some indices in mind.

A Shared Need
A change will not effectively be implemented in a system if some party do not perceived an essence for the change. Reinvention will never be welcome with some complacent staff. Hence, it behooves the leader to deal with such tendencies. The need and drive for change should be ‘sensed’ and championed by a crop of leaders across the entire organisation respectively.

Communicate!
The change vision and strategy must be communicated to the team. In a short time, though with repeated emphases, the big picture would be seen by all. It won’t be a bad idea to mention the benefits and side risk of the change knowing fully well that the proposed change would hit a brick wall if the risk is considerable high and the benefits uncertain or intangible. And these are the assignments a leader would have first done before making propositions to implement such change. The What? Why? and How? must be clearly explained to people. How would interacting systems impede or foster the change? All of these should be made vivid.

Equip
Reinvention necessitates a tweak in the modus operandi of an enterprise. It doesn’t have to be an outrightly new working principle, however the team would need to update its skills to fully adapt the change. Training for new skills, mentoring, coaching would go a long way to make the change a user-friendly one. From the outset, productivity and effectiveness might not be at its climax as people are just adjusting to the change. The status quo must however be continually appraised and improved on.

The Wins
It takes a leader or set of leaders to drive a change they see would position the team or department or organisation in an advantageous height. Gather momentum and generate some small wins. This is a sure-fire way to win cynics over. Consolidate the small wins as the success begets more success and what you get on the other side is that big sustainable change that you’ve envisioned.

To observe the frequent excitations that your team desires, reinvention {in the sense of both implementing small changes or overhauling the system} might just be a good and the right initiative.
Raise the edge always! Take the LEAD!



Femi TIAMIYU
#LEAD360