Change - Methodical Or Chaotic - Your Choice!

There is a big, expensive change being instituted in the way commercial airplanes descend from their cruising altitude in preparation for landing. For many years air traffic controllers have instructed pilots to descend in stair-step altitude changes which required the pilots to decrease power to the engines and then, once at the lower altitude, increase power to maintain the new altitude. Then they go through the same procedure over and over until touchdown.

The new system allows the pilots to throttle back to idle and literally glide down to touchdown without all the increasing and decreasing of throttle settings. This makes for a smoother descent for passengers and significant fuel savings for the airlines. But this multi-year process has resulted in a large investment in air traffic software, the writing and publication of new manuals and checklists, and many, many hours of pilot training in simulators.

Imagine the complexity of implementing this change. One day the airline system lands planes one way, the next day there is a whole different system in place. Imagine instituting a change such as this into your business. How do you do it without confusion and chaos?

Well, I'd love to say that it is easy, but it isn't. Making changes of this magnitude requires planning, timelines, and mid-course corrections, then stringent, constant attention to detail checking and double-checking, and that is just the front-end of the project. Imagine the problems and expense of scheduling thousands of pilots and controllers into a relatively small number of simulators for training. And yet they are able to pull it off.

So, when a small business institutes a relatively modest change, often chaos ensues. Why?

Most of the time it is because little planning, forethought, or communication has gone into the process of change so it seems arbitrary and incomplete. People affected need to be informed of the reasons for the change and taught the new procedures to get buy-in if the project is to move ahead in a methodical manner. Then, like the airlines, changes that makes improvements can be instituted with a minimum of confusion and chaos. Methodical or chaotic... it is your choice.