–
«Change management? An idiotic term. It is so crooked that it is completely inconceivable ». For me, with a master’s degree in change management from the University of Stavanger, it is difficult not to be provoked by Nicolai Tangen’s statement to Dagens Næringsliv Saturday. He follows up by saying: “Management is about developing, fine-tuning and modernizing. If you do not do that, you can put all the dirt on autopilot. “
It may not be so much Tangen that provokes me, but DN’s headline, which makes it seem that change management is an irrelevant subject. We are a little too many with expertise in this area for me to let it go without a comment.
I wonder if Tangen has understood what change management is all about. Or if he has gained a lot of experience with how others lead.
He must not believe that everyone who is a leader develops, fine-tunes and modernizes.
There are quite a few leaders who instead engage in overtaking, harassment and ruling techniques. There are managers who do not take into account employees’ needs for facilitation at all, who do not involve employees in decisions and who are very unresponsive to changes and new ideas.
I know this because in my role as sickness absence supervisor at Nav, I talk daily with people who are on sick leave due to the way they are treated by their manager. Often these people have gotten a kick out of the way they have been treated when there have been changes in the organization. These may include redundancies, mergers, changes in job content and dismissals.
–
When change is not managed in a good way, it has consequences.
Calling change management a concept is not correct. Change management is a field, and it is about understanding and influencing change processes in organizations and what happens to people when they are exposed to change.
Even though change is perfectly normal, it does not mean that it is not difficult for people. Leading people in a good way through change processes is not “so stupid that it is completely inconceivable”, to use the well-formulated statement from Tangen.(Terms)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and / or our suppliers. We would like you to share our cases using a link, which leads directly to our pages. Copying or other use of all or part of the content may only take place with written permission or as permitted by law. For additional terms look here.
–
