It might be age. I'm becoming increasingly irritated with the merciless abuse of virginal and virtuous words by verbally promiscuous management and IT types.
Take the word change, as in 'to alter'. It is a beautiful and perfectly good word coined in the early 13th century, parented by Old French (changier).
It has served us excellently well since then. Philosophers, artists, lyricists and writers endlessly grappled with its mysterious and elusive meaning. From Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, a seminal work in the history of liberal democratic thinking, to Bob Dylan's 1960s clarion call The Times They are A-Changin'.
The meaning of the word, of course, predates its English coinage. 2,500 years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus made one of the most definitive observations on the subject: you can't step in the same river twice. Change has been sitting at the heart of Western civilisation from the outset.
How shameful and sad it is then to observe the abuse that this noble and proud word is being subjected to today. These six letters which set great minds alight for over two and a half millennia is being raped by slick management and IT lacking any linguistic morals.
What does all this prurient business called 'change management' mean? Haven't life, work, community, history always been about managing change? Isn't 'change management' a vacuous belabouring of the obvious? Isn't talk of 'change management' just an attempt to make its promoters look smarter than they actually are?
But there's worse. There are now men and women crawling in our midst calling themselves change managers. As if they stand on ground zero of change, the first ones to think it through for our time.
How do these people present themselves to prospective clients without crawling under the table with embarrassment? 'Hi, I'm John, and I'd like to be your change manager.' Yuk.
5 comments:
The changes of the past were less unwelcome than those of the present. Change Managers just ensure that no matter how unwelcome the technology is, it will be effectively implemented. Therefore, by definition, change managers are hired to be shameless. As a side note, change managers (or their bosses) are as much into Sociology, Psychology and Organisational Behaviour, as they are into Information Technology. So it's unfair to blame it all on IT people :-)
C
Yes, it would appear that you are getting old.
Managing change is all about managing/influencing events/actions to achieve an end result (the change).
No one likes change - let's come clean about this. If it affects us positively it's probably better but if not, we are tempted to do whatever it takes to block it even when we know it's unavoidable. That's why some organisations have to employ change managers.
I say back to school lou to refresh your sociology, or perhaps an MBA could help broaden your mind a little bit.
And fire....
@ Anonymous - "Managing change is all about managing/influencing events/actions to achieve an end result (the change)." So that is the key to knowledge I have been looking for all my life.
Well, Anonymous,
(1) Not everyone dislikes change. Leaders tend to like it, as long as they're in control. These are the ones who employ Change Managers.
(2) Resistance to change is often attributed to fear of the unknown, as well as of the political changes induced by the change. Technology and innovation tend to shift political power from some people to others. Change Managers are employed to neutralise the former.
(3) I'm not quite sure what you mean by change being an end result. Change is more than that. Arguably there's no end result. What is an end result to the Change Manager, is just a stepping stone to his boss, and to many others.
C
Your comments are most welcome. Ideally, you'd sign with your real name. But if you choose to remain anonymous, please use a pseudonym and stick to it. This will avoid the confusion caused when different people sign 'Anonymous'.
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