Business Change: What Change Professionals Can Learn From Doctors

A visit a doctor's office or home will show something fascinating. They will have many books on a shelf. The more engaging part is that extraordinarily few, if any, of those books will be thin books. They can usually be long books with little print and plenty of technical terms and data. The telling part about this is that those displays basically instill confidence in the patient. The patient trusts that the doctor has spent years at college and more years as an intern, a resident, and likely an attending surgeon. Those books are a physical reminder of the depth of data a doctor is expected to have. There are some folk who are looking to work as change pros that expect to find the identical to the thin medical book. 

While there is less physical risk for other folks concerned with working as a change pro, the depth of information required to be effective at it is approximately being aphysician. Highly talented change professionals spend years immersed in the theory and practice of their field to develop their competency. Most have master's degrees and some folks working in the field have doctorates. This is not a field where one can simply read a few articles about it and then go to work.

Change management requires not only mastery of the elemental theory and best practices of change, but also areasonably deep knowledge of the hypotheses and best practices of business as well. These are abilities that cannot be gained overnite and definitely not from a thin medical book. It is also a field that must eschew the convenient short answers from time to time. Thereis value in being able to bestow a short, robust reason. However, it will not and doesn't work every time. For those who think it can, consider the last time a surgeon gave a two sentence answer to a complicated medical question.

For more information, please see our website: Business Change