Change Management

I already write a blog on these pages called The Virtual Space Traveller, but there are things I want to write about which don't sit comfortably under that heading.  I have itchy writing fingers.  I must have learned some interesting things during a forty year working life, maybe I should share some of them?

Forty years a wage slave and I still don't know any better  - sad really.  My father (a most interesting man, wish I'd known him better, he was ever present but oh so well defended) lectured in  Economics and then (when it became a main stream subject) Sociology, teaching himself as much as he needed to know about this fascinating proto-science from a vast array of very tempting looking books.  He had two Pelican paperbacks uncompromisingly titled "Work: 1" and "Work::2" which I read as soon as he'd finished with them.  Maybe that was where my fascination with work came from.

I know we mostly need to work to live and that living to work is unhealthy (work life balance is the key), but the range and variety of mankind's productive economic activity never ceases to astound me.

One of the most interesting things I've observed over my working life is the ever increasing pace of organisational change  - to a point where Change Management has become its own discipline with its own specialist practitioners.

I notice that we call it Change Management and Managing Change, not Progress Management and Managing Progress.  This may be because the relentless pace of change in the workplace doesn't necessarily mean improvement.  Sometimes I think that the culture of constant change in the modern workplace  is a corporate plot to keep the workforce perpetually stunned, bewildered and on the back foot, just in case they get too feisty.

Read such an interesting article the other day about the portmanteau career  -  the career which isn't one job but several, each one contributing its tithe to making a living.  Making a living isn't what many of us do either these days.  So many desk jockeys, completely out of touch with the reality of the wider world, participating in the global economy without much idea of what lies outside the boundaries of their own limited experiences, not making, crafting or creating but merely pushing data around.

That can't be a good thing.  There's so much data out there these days, how can it be possible to differentiate the relevant from the dross?

Small is beautiful, sustainability is a good thing and should be the way ahead, green, ethical and sufficiency are all favourite words and phrases in my world view.

Sermon over for this evening.  Good night.