To change or not to change.

At last, after two weeks of completing the Leading Organisational Change module, which was well led by one Mr. Cliff Chalon, I have the opportunity to sit down and write my first entry in my first ever blog. I guess in a way this is a change in itself, albeit an evolutionary one, of my own mindset. Mind you, I always think that guys (or girls) that blog are people who have too much time on their hands, unlike yours truly of course J.

The module was an eye opener of sort as I never realised that this so called change management was a process that is well defined and well proven over the years. Like what Cliff said, it is not like just saying ‘Change lah’ and everything will somehow change.

Another thing that struck me was the importance of change and the timing of it. I mean the sigmoid curve, which became the ‘cool’ word to say during class, really tells quite a story. Looking at things that is either happening and, more importantly, not happening around me, a lot of it I can now relate to this peculiar looking ‘line’.

For instance, Liverpool Football Club. I fell in love with this club as a five year old boy living in a small one bedroom flat in Singapore. In the 70s and in the 80s, ‘we’ were the dominant force in English, European and dare I say World football. But everything changes in the 90s. We played the same way, the club was managed the same way and was even owned by the same people but we don’t seem to be able to win the league anymore. I can understand now that this inability can be attributed to the aversion towards change and not only that, we are already too far up the curve that we are now playing catch up.

Sir Alex Ferguson, the manager to that-other-team-that-wears-red, once famously said after his appointment that he aims ‘to break the dominance of LFC’. A transformational change if you ask me especially considering that t-o-t-w-r have not won the league for 20 years up to that point. And it took him almost 6 years to achieve what he promised.

I believe this, in a way, shows the importance of making change and the timing of it. Too late and too little and you may suddenly find your rivals way ahead of you. And of course there is that little thing about changing while we are in a strong position i.e. start changing at the A point. Not many of us have the will nor the vision to do that. As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Guess the saying doesn’t really apply in the current environment we are living in.

Going back to LFC, at least now I can see that things are on the up. Senor Rafael Benitez, since his appointment in season 2004-2005, has made a lot of changes especially in the manpower aspect. He sold of a lot of his predecessor’s players and brought in new players he feels can help the team (a drastic action). He also brought with him new coaching staff and reassigned the roles of the existing ones (a developmental change). And as a result, these changes/actions have brought us our fifth European Cup in that same season. We’ve won an FA Cup and a European Super Cup since then but you can see that Senor Benitez is still ’changing’ the team.

One of the major changes, and my favourite one I might add, is the development of LFC’s youth team and players. Whereas traditionally, the youth players comes from the surrounding Merseyside area i.e. Scousers like Steven Gerrard, Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen and Steve McManaman, now we have youths from as far away as Finland and Hungary playing for the Under-16 teams. This change have benefited the local lads especially in the aspects of ball playing skills and technique as English players are traditionally known more for their physique and strength. The result of this policy has bear fruits in the form of winning back to back FA Youth Cup in 2006 and 2007 and also becoming the Reserves team champion in 2008. The significance of winning the Reserves league is more appreciated considering the team was made up of youngsters compared to other teams that fielded experienced professionals that weren’t selected for their first team.

Studying LFC and relating it to the things that I have learnt in the LOC module have made me understand what went wrong though it doesn’t really tell me a sure-fire way of correcting it. What it does tell me is that changes have to happen and if it is done correctly, results will be more than satisfactory. There is also the aforementioned thing about changing at the A point. In other words, the process of change is ever ongoing.

During the class, a lot was said about change and a lot of references were made to various authors, thinkers, lecturers about change and the importance of it. One author talked about shifting paradigm while others talked about change management plan and still the consensus is that change is a need and not an option to stay relevant. However, in hindsight, I would like to note here that this idea may not be as modern as we think.

Around 1400 years ago, someone said (literally translated) “Treasure 5 things before the coming of 5 things.

i. Health before sickness

ii. Youth before old age

iii. Wealth before poverty

iv. Leisure before occupation

v. Life before death”

The saying above was attributed to a hadith from Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h. and narrated by Tirmidzi. In a way it encompasses the idea regarding the need to change before change is enforced upon us.

As a conclusion, I can say that this thing we called change management, and all the processes that comes with it, is essential not only on an organisational level but also on a personal level.