Are you up for a challenge? If you’re not, there’s really no place for you in manufacturing and engineering. Indeed, look at any organisation at the moment, and if you’re not comfortable with change and resilient enough to deal with it, then there’s little room in today’s boardrooms and management positions.
The 2015 People & Productivity Research shows that our industry seems to be pretty confident about its ability to handle change. The majority of organisations would consider themselves to be fairly successful at managing and embedding change. We should be. We’re at the sharp end of new industrial technological innovation. From work processes and machinery to communication, our world is changing fast and we seem to be managing it.
Output is increasing. In 2014, the Office for National Statistics reported that manufacturing output has increased, despite a 60% fall in the total workforce. These productivity gains are due to technology, a highly skilled workforce and investment. In fact, 70% of all research and development investment is made in manufacturing. Careful management of these change processes has seen the annual rate of growth rise to 2.8%, almost double the 1.5% of the UK services sector.
The pace of change is certainly not slowing. Over 55% of respondents undergo change fairly frequently or constantly. However, there is a warning for the 10.5% who say they rarely undertake change projects and the third that don’t experience change that often.
Change is a constant. If you’re not managing it or you’re avoiding change, then in real terms you will be going backwards. I would go far enough to say that when you feel secure you should consider the future to be unstable and when we relax we should actually be sensing an imminent threat. If we’re not agile in responding and predicting change, then we become fragile.
You only have to look at the Standard & Poor’s Index to see that the lifespan of top companies has shrunk from 61 years in 1958 to 18 years today. Faster, younger and more dynamic organisations are quickly emerging to challenge the authority of market leaders.
That’s why we need change makers in our business, often called disruptive leadership. The results from this research show that 70% feel they are well equipped to effectively manage change. That means that 30% are not well equipped. Indeed, it seems to be a case of trial and error where experience counts, as 41% manage change with no formal training.
As a business leader I find this concerning as I know that the consequences of poorly managed change can be catastrophic, mainly because the line between chaos and change is incredibly fine. That’s why people are scared of change. They’re afraid of the unknown. They can see the potential for chaos and instead try to move as far away from that line as possible.
We see it differently. Turn that line between change and chaos into a tight rope. Change makers draw the line from where they currently are to where they want to reach. Then they walk that line. They keep their balance by being focused on the end goal and they never look down into the chaos below.
If the line of change goes up and down, that’s fine – as long as they’re focused on their destination. And that destination has got to be pretty powerful. People need to understand why they’re putting themselves at risk. They need to understand the real purpose behind the change. They need to have implicit trust in the leadership of the organisation. So while 77% say their employees are given a compelling reason to change, that’s still 23% who aren’t compelled to change.
Perhaps they’ll just follow those in front. But these results also show that one quarter of employees are quite or very resistant to change. That’s a real challenge.
That’s why we need to ensure that our leaders and managers are more than just well equipped to manage change. They need to pre-empt it. They need to communicate the compelling destination that will keep people focused and balanced. They need to be change makers not managers. Only then can we move and adapt fast enough to continue to secure our future.
