Any organization or organism seeking to improve does so by changing some aspect of the current condition. An athlete seeking to improve her 10,000 meter times, trains by running longer distances at slow paces and shorter distances at faster paces.  These training regimes may can result in sore muscles and breathlessness (I know, I’ve been there).  However, the athlete knows the pain associated with training is what leads to improvements in performance. In essence, the improvement comes from the change in training regime.

In many work environments, however, we loose sight of the connection between improvement and change. We focus on change and ignore the reason for change — change is the vehicle for improvement.

Charles Kettering, a famous early 20th century engineer once noted "The world hates change yet it is the only thing that has brought progress” (source: http://www.happypublishing.com/blog/15-change-quotes/).

Perhaps the reason “the world hates change” is because we focus to much on the change and too little on the improvements? Or perhaps we are comfortable with our current state and don’t care to improve? Or perhaps we don’t believe the proposed change (whatever it is) will lead to an improvement.

What do you think?