Change Management – A Doorway to New Possibilities

People who don’t change even after the change will perish,

People who change after the change will somehow survive,

People who change with the change will prosper,

But people who change before the change lead the world.

Intelligence is now being defined as ‘flexibility to change’ by Merriam-Webster, Oxford & other dictionary these days. Rupert Murdoch, an Australian-born American business magnate, investor, and media proprietor has very rightly said that ‘the world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow’.

In this information and generative AI world, things will not stay the way they are looking today. As everything is now changing at an astronomical pace, the 5Ts i.e. Technology, Tools, Techniques, Times & Terrains, which we are seeing today will not last for long but will change just in a blink of an eye. Accordingly, we have to keep updating the 5Ts viz. the Talent, Temperament, Tenacity, Team and Trust in own ability and on the ability of our Team, with the passage of time to counter those changing 5Ts.

As everything is changing very fast and the knowledge which we possess gets obsolete with time, we are only as young as the last time we changed our mindset and updated our knowledge or learnt any new skillset.

However, change has never been come with ease. For bringing change we not only require to acknowledge and accept the change but adopt the change in true spirit. We can’t change anything until we acknowledge it & accept it first. But most of the times, we unknowingly or deliberately, don’t want to acknowledge the need for the change and want to remain in the status quo, which proves suicidal for us and for our organization in due course.

When it comes to our mining industry, the resistance to change is generally so high that we generally change, when change has already occurred or sometimes don’t want to change even after the change. It’s also due to the fact that we the leaders, who are supposed to bring change(s), don’t want change(s), perhaps due to the perceived resistance, which we’ll have to face for bringing that change(s) in the organization.

For bringing change(s), it’s crucial that first of all we the leaders, who want to bring change, re-invent ourselves. It’s because one can’t bring change(s) until he/she change himself/herself and is committed to bring the change(s). It’s just like the fact that one who is not self-driven & motivated can’t motivate others.

Changes comes when we deflate our ego, our ‘I’, which very often acts like a roadblock, as every change needs a lot of persuasion down to the grassroot level. Carrying of ego is not going to serve the purpose. When we keep our ego aside, and persuade and convince our people, why we are going for the change(s) then only the changes which we aspire, occurs.

This requires mandatory deflating of ‘I’ as this one letter ‘I’ has always remained the major bottlenecks in bringing any change, both in the personal & professional life. Everyone thinks that I’m ok rest others need to change and it’s this very ‘I’ that plays the major role in non-achievement of the requisite change, which we want to bring.

Here, I’ll like to highlight that it’s only ‘I’ which is being written always in the capital letter, irrespective of its place in the sentence. Rest all other pronouns, namely he/she/we/they/you/it etc. are written in small letter when they come in the mid of the sentence. So, we can imagine, how we are egoistic right from the evolution of our human being that we didn’t compromise in respect of our self-ego and keep on writing ‘I’ as dominating capital letter, whenever we use it in the sentence.

As bringing change also demands challenging of status quo, I think it’s right time that we challenge it from here itself and write ‘I’ henceforth in the small letter as ‘i’ when it is to be written in the midway of the sentence, irrespective of its’ outcome. Rather, from this platform i would like to urge the English literature laurates not to give special status to ‘I’ and treat it equally with all other pronouns.

As change always comes by challenging status quo, here, i would like to give a live example, how challenging status quo brings even the most difficult change. Five-six year back, i along with my wife and my younger son was going to Bhilai by train for his admission in the DPS Bhilai. While enroute, i read a news in the newspaper which impressed me a lot. It was the victory story of one young Chhattisgarh women who had won the case from the Hon’ble Court. She in fact had challenged the system of writing religion & caste in the college admission form. She challenged that why she should write her religion or caste in the admission form, when she is not claiming for any kind of reservation, etc. The college had not accepted her form as she had not written these details in the form. When her form got rejected, she went into the court and fought for about an year and won the case.

The world is replete with such examples, when people fought & challenged the status quo to bring change – be it providing additional column for the third gender or making filling of father’s name non-mandatory for single mother in the form or anything else. In nutshell, the take away of the story is that if we want to bring changes we have to change ourselves and challenge the status quo.

Presently, the whole world as well as India is undergoing through unprecedented four major transformations viz. Energy transition, Digital transition, Supply-Chain transition and Geo-political transition. So, it’s high time to re-invent ourselves and go on bringing change with the time so that we and our organization remain relevant and thrive in this fast changing environment. However, this needs vision & foresight so that we can succeed in bringing changes before changes occur. If we succeed in doing this, we can lead this world in the field in which we are working. But if we don’t re-invent ourselves and change with time, the coming days are going to be very tough for us for sure.

Thanking you !

Sincerely yours

sanjeev