2008-09-09 The value of certainty

What this book does is to show how current fashions in change management are supposed to work. In that sense it is less dull than some of the competition, which usually try to tell you, not show you. However there is a step missing. It is missing because it is the hardest step, and one about which change management has nothing to say. Step 0 is: be right, or be lucky. Most of the alarm calls that reach execs, evoked here in pengiun terms, are wrong. Execs, like doctors, know that if they wait long enough, most 'crises' will just go away by themselves. Of those that are right, the remedial actions proposed, like the data that support them, are almost always contradictory and imperfect. It is true that sometimes any action is better than no action, if only to reassure people. In those cases, there is no need to be right - the need is to appear decisive, and not to be too wrong. In either case, the myth of certainty in the face of change is a convenient veil. Good change management may require eight reassuring steps, but good decision making requires lonely judgements, about which this book has nothing to say.