Capacity and Demand
Putting It All Together—The Mechanics of Capacity Management
Previous postings in this series have highlighted certain aspects of capacity management:
- Attending to the effects of future shock: resistance, results, encroachment, credibility
- The mental, emotional, and physical energy required to make adjustments in expectations
- The difference between capacity and resources
- Operating in The Zone
- Calculating change demand and measuring remaining capacity
In this final posting, we’ll look at the mechanics of the actual capacity management process and explore how it can be used to balance the demands of change with the capacity that remains. more
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How to Manage Capacity
There are two aspects to capacity management—its relationship to stability and uncertainty, and the measurement of its variables.
The Zone
Managing capacity involves:
- monitoring the supply of, and demand on, adaptation capacity, and, when necessary,
- making adjustments in order to operate in “The Zone” (a space for pursuing as much change as possible while minimizing the negative effects of future shock).
As I stated in the first post of this series, future shock occurs when the demands of change exceed a person’s or group’s capacity to properly deal with its implications. (This is reflected in their inability to maintain productivity, quality, and safety standards). At first glance, you might assume that future shock is something to avoid at all cost. However, that’s not what I’ve seen from leaders who consistently achieve their change objectives. more
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www.connerpartners.com
How Do People Learn to Adapt to Change?
Major change is triggered when people face a significant discrepancy between what they expected and what actually happens during change. People adjust to change, not by learning to like what is taking place, but by forming new expectations that can lead to success under the new conditions. At a personal level, three types of energy are required to make these adjustments in expectations: more
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www.connerpartners.com
Future Shock: The Scourge of Organizational Change
“Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.” —Alvin Toffler
Toffler nailed it. Forty years ago, in his groundbreaking book of the same name, he coined the term ‘”future shock” to describe the various problems that arise when people deal with more change than they can metabolize. Like fingerprints or cornea signatures, each person has a threshold for dealing with change. Once past that boundary, any more change triggers the “shattering stress and disorientation” of future shock.
Toffler’s prediction of what could happen is an all-too-familiar reality for us today. A quick glance at any TV, Internet, or newspaper summary of current events provides ample evidence that we live in a world inundated with dramatic fluctuations and redefinitions of what we, until recently, thought was stable. The increases in the volume, momentum, and complexity of transitions we contend with surpasses anything we could have imagined only a few years ago. There is no longer any safe haven from ongoing turbulence and uncertainly. Everywhere we look, people are either in future shock or recovering from some degree of it.
Organizations Feel It Too
To keep up with customers and competition, organizations must react to external pressures for change, as well as accommodate their own desire to change. To a growing extent, the combination is overwhelming. In fact, it is precisely because the downside of change has become so prevalent and costly in recent years that our profession has grown as much as it has. more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
