4 Reasons To Light The Change Fuse

Lighting the fuse is an appropriate analogy for any leader who is about to initiate a significant change process. If you make a mistake during this critical process the whole situation can figuratively blow up in your face leaving your people and your organization in worse condition than before you started.

It is never enough to just do the right thing, you must do the right thing, the right way, and especially at the right time.  There are at least four major reasons for initiating the change process:

1.  Need Must Be Met—this would appear to be the easiest of all the reasons after all there is someone or something that is not right and we can make it better.  However, rarely does everyone in your group see this need in the same way and many may not be directly motivated by this cause at all.  Be careful of needs that only touch a limited constituency.
2. Opportunity Should Be Taken—this one requires everyone to look out into the future and see a new reality that is better than the one they are in today.  This requires maximum amount of visionary leadership to paint a picture that people can embrace to the point they are willing to move forward.
3. Problem Can Be Solved—here again one person’s problem is merely another person’s distraction.  Compelling reasons must be given that this situation not only if affecting people in a negative way but if it is not resolved it will only become worse.
4. Crisis Threatens Our Future—now you have an issue that can be communicated in such a clear and dramatic way because if it is not dealt with the future of this group of people or organizations is in peril.  Never take a problem and try to turn it into a crisis for impact sake because people will see through the clever marketing and lose confidence in the leader.

The bottom line for any leader is that you have a very limited amount of leadership capital with your people so spend it wisely.  Most people will only be motivated to change when the pain of the present is clearly worse than their fear of the future.  Be careful not to judge them for that because to some degree we are all the same way.

How do you know when the time is right for change?