Stability

Stability and change. Most people, especially in the corporate World will argue that you need to continue to innovate to succeed. In literary terms you can find 'sayings' both for and against change; in political terms everyone is always talking about change; in our personal lives we are always against change and upheavals.

I find this topic interesting just because in different situations, leadership might require stability, and others might require change -and it is impossible to create any kind of generalisation or advice on this. There are, of course, issues related to responsible leadership: a duty to understand what impacts changes might have on people (many are unforeseen) or a duty to be brave enough to change ahead of the times rather than after the times, in order to remain competitive.

I want to focus on the Political World though: Looking at Iraq, life was not great before Saddam Hussein, and it will hopefully be much better 'after him' -though when the 'happy' 'after him' period arrives is anyone's guess. Change is never easy (personally, politically or professionally) and Iraq is a simple way of asking, is the change process worth it? Even if the end result is better than before the change, the change process might be so bad (or so long) that is outweighs the benefits of the change altogether.

People like stability; people do not like to take risks and there needs to be a big enough motivation to take risks; or else those risks won't be taken. You could argue that in Iraq things were not bad enough (yet) that people were willing to risk doing whatever was needed to change the status quo. Now its clear that it is not so simple as to say that the US acted like an external consultant, assessing that 2002 was the time that the change should happen: that the risks were good enough (because there were many reasons for their intervention); but looking at a political situation through a corporate viewpoint draws interesting parallels.

Who should instigate change? The internal staff (or citizens) or the external consultant/new CEO (revolutionary leader or attack/'invasion' by another country)? How can the change process be best managed -and what is the goal of that change? Interestingly I think looking at Iraq from a business point of view it's clear that the US (apologies for simplifying such a controversial and complex issue) had a vision for the 'post-change period', but had only though of the first few strategies for getting there, underestimated the time to complete the change, forgotten to think about what the impacts of the change might be on different stakeholders, ignored what the 'competition' might do, misjudged the time frame and so on. Anyone reading this could draw their own parallels to various situations.

The end of the day is that business knows how hard change is, there are thousands of models and theories and good and bad examples.. there are though some simple rules that most MBA schools will teach. But what about political change? Even looking at more modest changes, like a domestic election leading to a change in political party leadership, there seems to be no real understanding of how to create the change, what the vision is, what the strategies are and so on. At least, that is a very initial statement.

With deeper reflection, I believe that there are many successful cases of political change, and what seems to be common with all of them is that change was so desperately needed that it was simple and obvious to work out the details, the strategies, to get stakeholder support etc. Nowadays most western countries don't have serious need to change, therefore whatever supposed changes they initiate (and most mainstream parties in most developed democracies seem to be very alike) they are not very successful. Now if change was really needed then an extreme party (communist, fascist or whatever) would take over... therein lies the issue: these parties will take over once the need is great enough and they get enough support. However it is in the current mainstream parties interests to stop that from happening.

The competition in the corporate world is much greater; the need for change is often more pressing and more is at stake. Politically countries can afford somewhat to just be stable, making minor changes, and sometimes companies can do the same -other times companies cannot afford that whatsoever. So maybe politics needs to look at itself from a corporate viewpoint; to look at issues about stakeholders, visions and strategies, goals and accountability, 'change or die' perspectives, scenario planning, competitive analysis and so on. This is an interesting topic to explore more of in the future.

Meanwhile I'm more interested in the 'tipping point' that leads to successful changes.. when are what pressures so great that change happens? who instigates the change? was the change worthwhile? For me, time is the most important issue with change. Try to make the change quickly. Get it over with, then tweak it. Everyone will argue with change, no-one likes change, everyone is suspicious of new things and demands will change, pressures will change... so much will change as time drags on that the whole change process becomes based on a cause that has changed and a vision that is no longer relevant. So, responsible leaders need to understand this (no matter what they are leading), they need to prepare, research, strategise. But most of all they need to get their timing right. Make the change at the right time -get it finished when that time is still right.

Then start thinking about other issues in change mangement: expectation setting, vision setting, leadership, buy-in, progress communication, stakeholder participation and agreement etc etc. How much of this has ever been done politically? Only when the situation was so bad that enough people could easily identify the problem and the problem was so serious that it had to be changed NOW and quickly has political change been successful (of course other factors are useful too, like outside support or copying other successful models) -overall change is about time, and about need. Right now some of the world is slowly starting to realise that change is needed, and quickly, to stop climate change or HIV/AIDs. But the world is not there yet. The pressures for change are not direct enough, not important enough, not relevant enough to create the tipping point needed. Lets hope though that this change will come, it will come quickly, be done quick enough, and be successful. Isn't is scary to compare the battle in Iraq with the battle against HIV/AIDs?

When will the end come? Who really wants the end? Are those who have the means to end it willing to end it or do they know how to end it? Is it just getting worse? The longer it goes on, the worse it gets -that is for certain.