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Managing Yourself

How to Embrace Complex Change

Linda Brimm | page 125

For ambitious executives working in dynamicglobal businesses, big career transitions—to new roles, organizations,industries, or geographic locations—are a fact of life. So is the need toconstantly adapt to new technologies, work groups, strategies, and ways ofthinking and behaving. And yet even seasoned professionals find this sort ofchange difficult. Management researchers have a lot to say about the best wayto approach organizational change, but when it comes to personal transitions,there is no blueprint for success. Over years working with MBA students andexecutives, the author has developed a framework to help in thinking aboutchange. It involves navigating the Seven C’s: complexity (considering all theissues in a particular change effort); clarity (understanding and prioritizingthose issues); confidence (believing that one can be successful in making thechange); creativity (brainstorming innovative solutions to problems thatarise); commitment (beginning to implement the change); consolidation (leavingbehind the previous identity to adopt the new one); and change (living into thechange and its consequences).

HBR Reprint R1509J