Change is constant, and as we move into the future we find change happening around us impacting both our personal and professional lives. Embracing change and being able to cope with the circumstances is one thing, but managing or leading change is another thing completely.

Here’s something for you to mull over-Most people often ask about the difference between change management and change leadership. The difference between the two is actually quite significant and those terms are not interchangeable.

The term Change Management is what most everyone is used to. This refers to structures to keep change under control by managing change as it comes to minimize distractions or obstructions. It doesn’t refer to creating or anticipating the need for change.

Change Management involves thoughtful planning and sensitive implementation, but most importantly, the consultation and involvement of those who will be impacted by the change. We often fail to ask ourselves the question: How will those affected by this change react?

Change Leadership on the other hand concerns those driving forces and visions that fuel the transformation. It is the engine that makes the process go faster, smarter and more efficiently. It is mostly associated with large-scale changes.

Most people you talk to will talk about change management and managing change. This is what they’re used to. They’re usually trying to push things through at a very high speed and minimize disruption. It’s sometimes done through external consultants that are good at that in collaboration with task forces that are basically given the whole goal of “push this thing along”.

And change leadership is just fundamentally different—it’s an engine. It’s more about the big vision and what change an organization needs to move all its forces from good to great. It’s more about masses of people who want to make something happen. It’s about empowering lots and lots of people.

However, change leadership has the potential to get things a little bit out of control. You don’t have the same degree of making sure that everything happens in a way you want at a time you want when you have the 1,000 horsepower engine. What you want to do, of course, is have a highly skilled driver and a heck of a car, which will make sure your risks are minimum. But it is fundamentally different.

The world, as we all know it right now, talks about, thinks about, and does change management.-it doesn’t do much change leadership, since change leadership is associated with the bigger leaps that we have to make, associated with opportunities that are coming at us faster, staying open for a shorter period of time, bigger hazards and bullets coming at us faster, so you really have to make a larger leap at a faster speed.


Change leadership is going to be the big challenge in the future, and the fact that almost nobody is very good at it is—well, it’s obviously something to think about.


Source: Haitham Mattar