Changing views on changes

"Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived."

I share this view on changes with President Lincoln.  Not everyone likes change, and determining when it's necessary and when it's not not can sometimes be difficult, and implementing it is even more so.

Despite that though, I believe it is usually a bad idea for a leader to force change on anyone, whether it be a fellow leader or a follower.  The old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," is the primary reasoning for this most of the time.  For example, someone might come up with a "more efficient" way to get from Point A to Point B, when it isn't necessarily better.  I think this could be likened to driving one's car through buildings to get from their house to the store, instead of going around!  In addition, when the change involves making a decision, more often than not changing something based on a gut reaction may end badly not just for the leader, but for the group for which the decision was made.

So when is change needed and how does a leader handle it?  I think that change is needed when there is some tangible problem that needs to be addressed or at least when a particular solution to a problem is truly better than the one currently in place.  Selling the idea of change to others may be the hardest part in all of this, however.  In my opinion, the best one can do, at first, is to make their case for change and garner as much support as possible before implementing it.  If that is not possible, such as when change will need to come soon or the change will never be immediately accepted by a majority, the only thing left for a leader to do is use their legitimate power to implement it, and use their referent power to put a positive spin on it.  This means that a new leader should never change something as soon as they achieve their leadership position, at the risk being antagonized by followers, decreasing their starting referent power, and threatening his/her ability to implement change in the future.

In the end, change is inevitable, and as future leaders we can only: