White ant are to houses what poor change is to transformation

White ants (termites) are known for causing destruction if they get into the wood of a building, and result in huge financial losses. Common in South and West Australia as well as the USA, they can cause support beams to fall down and can even cause the whole house to be uninhabitable. They cause enormous amounts of damage - often without any visible changes occurring until the last stages! Left untreated they can spread rapidly and cause destruction in a short amount of time.

The same thing can occur when managing change. Ineffective management is often not spotted until it's too late. Poorly managed change is white ants. It infects the organisation and causes destruction.

Effective change leadership is pre-requisite to effective change management. It's got to come first. The biggest mistake is deciding what to change to then rushing off to try and make it happen. Why's this a mistake? It's a mistake because you haven't properly recognised what needs changing in the first place. The what to change, i.e., the problem, must be properly structured before you can reliably work out what you want to change to, and then how to make it happen. Why must the problem be properly structured? Because how else will you know your solution solves the problem without causing new ones in a veritable white ant breeding programme.

Change leadership focuses on working out what to change, what to change to, and how to make the change happen. And it does all this without causing new problems. Only then is it safe to delegate the making it happen to a change manager. Don't abdicate though, your change manager is best positioned to identify white ants and may need your help in eradicating them.