We live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous), with disruption as the biggest threat towards most businesses, who have not fully adapted to the fourth industrial revolution, which is characterized by Big Data, The Internet of Things, Robotics, Artificial intelligence, Argument reality and other disruptive technologies. And if you ask Michael Nielsen (on the photo), Regional Operations Manager for South East Asia at Caterpillar, in such world the only constant is change.
Management of change in real lifeMichael has overseen and managed the whole range of change management cases during his many years of work experience within many different industries. From managing implementations of the new IT-systems, constructions of the new factories, to more unexpected/unplanned change management cases – for example.
Two companies become entagled in a political dispute. They were situated on the opposite sides of the same Indian river bank, which was separating two states. For various reasons, the two state governments strongly disagreed on matters concerning the rights to the river water, resulting in a discontinuation of all transport of goods and communications between the two states. This situation seriously affected the two companies, which at the time worked closely together and shared their resources. Suddenly this kind of cooperation was no longer possible.
And while the two state governments were working on resolving their dispute, Michael’s task was to manage the change in his company, which he did by moving the production to other factories in the South East Asia. "Literally overnight we needed to re-configure all inbound and outbound logistics of the company, which was a very dramatic and out-of-the blue change management experience," explains Michael.
Michael will share more of such Change Management case stories and experiences from his own career in his Change Management module as a part of the IME Mini MBA executive course in Singapore. As he puts it:
“In Change Management (CM) there are two important dimensions – the quality of the CM solution and the acceptance of the change. Management can have worked out the perfect spreadsheet solution, but if the organization and it’s culture does not concur, the CM programme will fail.”
Read as well: 7 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Mini MBA Executive Course
