Thinking about a career in change?

Now is a busy time for people who work in organizational change.  As the chaos of the markets settles down from shock to resigned action, there will be a need to assist organizations re energize and rebuild.  Many organizations will react to the downturn with reduced headcount,  or compressed organizational structures.  In my experience, and I am sure that of many who work in change management, a new structure does not alway work very well  however well planned on paper.  It’s into this space that organizational change specialists step to assist the re energizing of the business – the process of getting the energy flowing again,  in  a positive and productive direction.

If you are a survivor of the corporate night of the long knifes then giving your all is not always the first concern. Keeping a low profile , head down and out of sight is many’s natural and understandable  reaction.  It’s always the tallest corn that gets cut first as the old adage goes.  If this is the case how will our organizations innovate, thrive and really survive? You need peoples freely given effort to get an organization really buzzing and really competing – that will not come to be when people are anxious and afraid to contribute.

So what has this got to do with a career in change?  Well history tells us that the situation we are in now is not new, the scale may be larger than we have experienced for a while but the situation is not in itself new.  Change can be managed in a positive and engaging way – or an imposed and brutal way – there is a choice.  What many organizations are lacking is people who see change as their role , their vocation, their territory.  If we had more really committed change agents,  change managers,  change executives, change leaders then we would I am sure have more positive and  well implemented change.  We rarely accept amateur accountants or people who want to dabble in medicine, but change is an area of work we think we all know  a bit about and so can have a bash at.

So why don’t you think about a career in change and become an expert in demand – as any really good practitioner is at the  moment.  It doesn’t stop you having another role within the organization, but being an expert in positive change management is never going to go out of fashion.