Change Management (1)

Because of one or more determinants, a tipping point may be created that will result to a season of growth. This will propel business to expand or a blog to increase its bandwidth due to increased readership. Leaders and blog owners must be able to make concrete decisions to address the demand, thus, change management skills is critical.

Let me borrow an illustration used by Dr. David E. Sumrall, undershepherd of Cathedral Of Praise– Manila, when effecting change. It’s like navigating a tanker vis-a-vis a small boat. To change the course of a small boat is easy, but for a tanker, it takes proper calculations, space and timing before steering the ship.

Growth = Changes = More Growth or Plateau

Changes if not managed well can either reverse or reduce the growth. Thus, leaders, entrepreneurs and bloggers must all learn basic change management skills.

The change, however, should be commensurate to the demand and determined partly by the growth rate. And for every change, additional investments on machines and human resources can not be far behind.

Example from the Bible

In the book of Acts, after Jesus rosed from the dead, and after the 120 remaining followers were baptized in the Holy Spirit, a church was born and experienced tremendous growth. From 120 followers, the tipping point (baptism of the Holy Spirit) resulted to almost 3000% growth as new members were added and the church grew to 3000 (Acts 2:1-41). This resulted to administrative problems– the members quarreled on matters like “allocation of resources” (Acts 6:1-7).

To address the issue, the leaders took a decisive action– (1) they prioritized their calling in life (to pray and to preach the word) then (2) they appoint other leaders to take care of the administrative matters.

Modern day example

I knew of an organization wherein the growth was hampered when the leaders decided not to add new people or create a new group to manage the present growth and propel future growth. The load was still given to the existing manpower compliment resulting to inefficiencies, burnout and eventually, some of the people decided to leave.

Blog example

I lost 50% of my subscribers from my old blog at WP after having my new domain. Despite the announcement, only half of the readers became used to the present URL. Likewise, I observed that my multiply contacts where slighted when, I began to be active on this blog– they felt unimportant and became less interested”. Readership on multiply dropped but this does not translate, either, to growth on this blog. So, I continued with the account and used it for depository of music and pics, and links to my post here to keep them on the loop

Basic Lessons On Change Management

• Treat people with respect. Take into consideration the emotions involve– blog subscribers will not necessarily follow us anywhere. On the other hand, companies have the risk of losing top employees because of demoralization. Ensure they were advised (at some extent consulted) for the changes. The bigger the organization or readership of blog, the earlier and longer the communication process should be. Be sensitive, in short.
• For the leaders, know your calling or purpose in life. This will ensure that you will not be sidetracked by the peripherals. As an example from the bible, the church leaders focused instead with their calling (pray and preach the word). This resulted to more growth. (Acts 6:2, 7)
• Appoint or tap a new group to take care of the admin. functions (Acts 6:3) so entrepreneurs can focus on marketing and operations. In blogs, ensure that you will have a good hosting service to help you in the season of growth to take care of technical stuffs. In this way, you can focus on writing good contents and seo.