Send to KindleChange? Why?
I like to watch the question forums on LinkedIn. They give me an idea what’s going on in the business world and I learn some things from the various questions and answers I see there. The other day I saw one that really caught my eye. Someone wanted to know what they should rename their training department. Of course the first question that came to my mind was why?
As leaders it’s important to always ask ourselves why we want change to happen. There’s nothing wrong with change, change can be a good thing. But we need to make sure change is happening because of something important and not just because we want to change. I remember some years ago going through the whole reengineering process. It was based on actually some pretty good ideas about how to make the work place more efficient. But it became almost a contest to see who could change what the fastest. I saw org charts changing, and people titles and the names of departments and division; it became change, change, change. We very quickly lost sight of why we were doing all this change in the first place and as a result the change did nothing more than confuse things.
You want to rename your training department? Go ahead and do that. But ask yourself why you’re doing it. Is the department taking on new responsibilities maybe shedding old responsibilities, or maybe it’s going to start operating in a completely different way. If that’s the case, and changing the name will help everyone understand that then its fine, change it. But if you’re just changing the name to keep up with the Jones’, then you’re probably wasting your time. And by the way, your workers will see that and they wonder why you want to waste time on something like changing the name of the training department. But, on the plus side, it will give them something to laugh at you about.
