Lessons in Change Management

Suresh is a qualified, chartered cost accountant and a PMP with more than 30 years of experience in organizations engaged in various industries, such as ceramic tiles, automobiles and engineering.

  Change Management  

Recently, I was in Johannesburg and had the opportunity to visit the Apartheid Museum and a house where Nelsen Mandela lived. I am a great fan of Mandela because of the way he forged reconciliation and paved way for healing.

Mandela’s release topped headlines on February 11, 1990, and his prison number (46664, for prisoner number 466 in 1964) is known all over the world. That number and date will live on as he never once faltered from the cause that he eventually won; they are just part of what make up the nature of this man.

Nelson Mandela the prisoner, the president and the man was and is an inspiration to us all. While he was in jail, Mandela would read William Ernest Henley's Invictus to fellow prisoners. The poem, about never giving up, resonated with Mandela for its lines, "I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul." He truly was captain of his soul, which transformed the world’s thinking.

Almost after four years from the date of Mandela’s release, John P. Kotter wrote an article for Harvard Business Review entitled “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” This paved the way for the development of an eight-stage process of creating major change. As I was writing this article, an interesting thought surfaced on how Mandela’s change and transformation would fit Kotter’s model. So I have…

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