“She looked up at me and said, ‘Why don’t you just go to Georgetown?’ And I said, ‘I believe I will.’ This woman later became his wife, “so that road turned out pretty good for me,” he said, adding that he and his wife, who was in the audience, are now almost inseparable.
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March 2016Dr. Owens offered several suggestions on how to navigate change:
- Planning change is extremely important, and the first thing that one must do to make change occur is to have the desire to change.
- To work through change, a leader has to be knowledgeable, wise, and a good communicator.
- There is always resistance to change. Identify these people and realize that you will have to work with them.
- When you are planning change, you have to focus on the benefits of changing and include the risks of not changing; ask management to consider the risks of not making, as well as making, the change.
- Changing is difficult, but not changing can be fatal.
- Change can come in many forms, big or little.
- The secret to change management is to get started.
- You want to get feedback from everybody, which can come from the stakeholders, from other employees, from some of your clients, or from vendors.
- Once you get feedback, you have to make adjustments according to the advice you received.
- Always try to celebrate early successes.
- Stakeholders must be kept involved in a change process until its completion.
- At the end of a change process, evaluate what went well and what could be done to make the process more successful.
- After successful change projects, employees will be more comfortable with future projects.
- Decisions should be made carefully; the decisions that you make today will determine your tomorrow.
Thomas Collins is a freelance medical writer based in Florida.