It is an effort on the part of any successful commercial venture to shed its thoughts and acts, and, through a planned process that is appropriately oriented to face environmental compulsions, realize the goal that it has set for itself. Moreover, if the leadership does not appropriately adapt itself to the `change' and fails to carry the team with it in implementing the plans, the result would be the creation of an undesirable vicious circle wherein the failure at the leadership front and at the business front would endlessly be chasing each other.
"Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant." These are the words of Benjamin Disraeli, the renowned statesman and famed Prime Minister of Great Britain during Queen Victoria's reign. The well-known poet Robert Burns wrote, "Nature's law is change." Undeniably, the life and activity around us present unmistakable pointers that the very world itself is ceaselessly evolutionary and that its own genesis is the outcome of this evolution, or `change'. Man is still evolving and he will continue to do so. Seasons change. The bright, warm rays of the sun and the soft glow of the moon alternate between days and nights. Economies touch peaks and valleys. Competition picks up or dies down. Change is the unquestionable order of the day. Change plays a very important role in the present day rat race for one-upmanship, or even for very survival.
The force of change is nowhere more evidently active than in the world of business, where it is necessary to plan for change, of course, not only for mere survival, but also for staying ahead of peers and rivals. Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter is credited with having made a significant remark[1] that successful business units have `a culture that just keeps moving all the time.' |
