“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man,” said wise old Heraclitus, Greek philosopher from 500 B.C. He was, ofcourse, talking of time and its flow and the inevitable changes wrought by the movements in growth. 

If water is the medium for analogies, the one more suitable to change, is Charles Handy’s boiling frog. This is where this frog sits in a slowly warming beaker, comfortable and happy with the conditions, until the water at one point begins to boil… alas it is too late for the frog to escape and it struggles to its end, writing itself a rather foolish obituary.

 Change is one of the most difficult things to manage. If one could wave a magic wand and teleport into the future where change is all set up, what a happy circumstance that would be.

Change is viewed by most people with a dread that is instinctive and inborn. Are we all creatures of such strong habit and routine, that the thought of doing things differently evokes no excitement? The factions that a group splits into when confronted by change, have on the one hand, outright detractors who decry it with a violence that leaves one flabbergasted because they fly in the face of reason.  On the other hand, there are those who nod vigorously to the change with all the accoutrements of an intrepid maverick, only to manifest indelible spots and colours of custom at the implementing stage. These are often the game players who are janus-faced when it comes to change and will insidiously erode it while seeming to be supporters.

Then there are the fence sitters who wait to see how it goes, eulogising and despairing in turn, as they manipulate the thin edge, while deciding which way to hop onto the winning side. The tragedy with this lot is that they do so much swaying on that fence, corresponding with the ups and downs in the fortunes of change, that they end up looking rather ridiculous on their balancing act.

I know there has been a lot of literature on and workshops done by the change gurus on how to manage change. Yet when it happens, there are many surprises. The fact is that most of these gurus are from the western countries. Their view is therefore, of a workforce that has certain features, values, worldview, practices, socio-economic and psychological realities and makeup, which has little resemblance to ours.

Our people often treat their workplaces like a playground for social opportunity  - to meet, talk, eat, hobnob, flirt, fight, slack off, hibernate and superannuate. Not that the western counterpart has no such inclinations, it’s just more controlled and structured by the pink slips that float around. We have the mazdoor sangarsh legacy, the validity given by the movies to the downtrodden worker, the unions and satyagraha manch that protects every misdemeanour.  Our firing policies are dictated by an overwhelming pity for the bal bachon wala or wali to the utter helplessness of red tape procedures, made mandatory by some association of workers.

In such conditions, the notes from the west fall flat. The deadline is indeed a ‘dead’ line as far as people here go, and because there is no consequence, there is no accountability. The united stand of a populace, who feel no compunction, makes ‘shame’ a casualty. The Chinese work for their famous ‘face’. The Confusian ‘society over self’ value is ingrained in them since childhood.  We Indians, on the other hand, have more karma and rebirth and past birth superstition than you can shake a stick at. It allows us to let destiny take over our lives and absolve ourselves of all responsibility. And then there was  Gandhiji, the Messiah of Civil Disobedience. He forgot to demarcate the boundaries in his Movement. A fact that the visionary C. Rajagopalchari predicted and illustrated way back to deaf ears. Today it is a blanket philosophy for every kind of protest. It even accepts thod phod and bus burning as part of collective anger, which has no face and which is considered legitimate. The Shiv Sainiks have taken this  to a state-of-the-art moral code that justifies molestation, slander and personal vendetta under the umbrella of civilian justice.

Under such circumstances, what kind of manner should the leader adopt to ensure success? What policies need to be adopted to combat the instinct to throw out change because it entails work and inconvenience? A tendency so strong, that any hint of possible failure in the process of change, is likely to culminate in a mutiny of sorts. Moreover, derisive voices have a way of snowballing to strike terror into the most determined agent of change.

Sometimes, I think there must be labels to identify the groups like one would do in a sociogram. There must be labels to identify the phases too. Change should be a phenomenon that we study, especially at a time when we no longer have the luxury of time to make changes. Language has a way of not just defining but also clearing thought without the baggage of confused emotions. There must be labels and definitions for the phases such as First Blush phase. Doubting phase. Crying phase. Complaining phase. Revolt phase. Redoubt phase. Jealous of the Success phase. Resignation phase. Last shot at killing it phase. Sulking phase. Sucking up phase. Acceptance phase. Loss of memory phase. Ownership phase. Ofcourse, these phases are not uniform but will be congruent to the attitudinal differences in the factions.

The labels would ensure instant understanding of the step-in-change phenomena and quell all nervous anxiety. It would save people from going into long drawn examples, explanations, side tracking, screaming meetings, talks, fights etc. In a word if we could explain it, the situation would be under control. At least it would not derail the process, by leading decision makers  into the quagmire of hair splitting irrelevant details, catering to time-consuming nitpicking, personality and ego battles.  Then, we would be able to state that this is but one phase of the normal chain.

Sitting smiling on the pedestal of ultimate victory is a fact wedded to success. That is, once change is successfully implemented, all detractors adopt it with the glibness of well-oiled seals. Suddenly, there is ownership of the change, pride in the team effort, need to be acknowledged for hard work put in and the rest of the bandwagon features. I had a friend who used to say ‘Success has many fathers; Failure has only one sorrowful mother.’ Therefore the need to succeed when implementing change becomes critical.

If one can hang on to the pains of change without caving in, the same principles of routine and habit operate to turn the elements of change into familiar routine. Then, there is no going back. That is the good news. The key is to create habit.

So should one pull people over coals in the implementation phase at the cost of extreme unpopularity to ensure a painful labour but a healthy birth? Or does one succumb to the seduction of the guru mantras that call for ‘team’ work and patience, kindness, empathy, taking everyone along blah blah…. and risk the possibility of an abortion? A slow and steady process  is what a lot of people espouse for its political correctness. More leaders want to be liked than they want to be respected.  Sometimes, I wonder how many great changes have got aborted, sabotaged and jettisoned at the alter of a nervous allergic-to-change employee mob!

At the end of the day, nothing succeeds like success. It also engenders a few ideas for the writing club to write one more book… and sometimes a series of ‘best sellers’, containing the nugget, the kernel idea, which puts into place an enviable industry for new bottles and stale wine.