Chapter 5

When Everything Changes: Working with Complex Change

In This Chapter

arrow Accomplishing large-scale change one piece at a time

arrow Organizing complex plans to help them go smoothly

arrow Overcoming employee resistance to frequent changes

arrow Preparing your company for continuing changes

Sometimes it hits you unexpectedly; other times it seems like a good idea at first but then you begin to have second thoughts. What is it, exactly? Complex change. Chaos. When everything, absolutely everything, is changing at once. Customers, technology, company culture, economic conditions, leadership teams — you name it, it's changing. This amount of change is not impossible to handle; it just takes a fine balance among assertive leadership, aggressive goals, realistic project timelines, near-perfect communication, fully staffed change teams, and a little luck. Not much, right?

You can't depend on luck, but you can prepare to deal with complex change, whether it is planned or unexpectedly winds up on your to-do list one Monday morning. In this chapter, you find real-world examples of complex changes to ...

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