Change Management Poem: Out of the Trenches

Passchendaele progress?

How do we manage change

while barely changing ourselves?

We are caught in no man’s land

charging out of trenches

to who knows where and

we can’t go back.

Yet we are not moving forward.

We keep our heads down as

barrages of tips and advice on

critical success variables

innovative strategic planning

killer app tactics

process improvements

lean approaches

and mutating technology

explode over our heads

while 3 more  screens scream,

“LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME.”

Face down in the mud

We hear the management consultants bellow out

the latest 55 rules of success and the

200 competencies we need to achieve them.

Or they send us anemic marching orders

dressed up as a large font 100 page parable book

about moving cheese or learning 5 secrets.

Perhaps it is time to just stop in the muck

See where we are and if we really need to

storm the next trench.

Let’s look ahead and look carefully at what we leave behind

before we race head long into a Passchendaele parade.