by John Brooker | Jan 17, 2012 | Develop Opportunities, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges
To make change stick you need certain things in place… “In this world of change, naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost” Anne-Sophie Swetchine ~ Russian hostess How can you make change stick? The family visited the Roman baths in Bath last week, learning about the Romans in Britain. I never realised that Julius Caesar’s army came and left, the Romans not returning for 100 years. Were they hoping the weather might change? I also didn’t realise how abrupt their departure was after they did settle. They took over the country for four hundred years, and then they left. After a while, it was like they had never been. That may be a simplistic view, but all of their brilliant engineering, sewers, water supplies, buildings and roads (even if the route was there), that brought major benefit to the country rotted away or were destroyed. How could that happen? I wondered if the Romans could settle and rule a country for 400 years and leave almost no trace of their settlement, how difficult must it be to cement change in organisations, even if it is for the good of the company? There’s a temptation here to reach for the textbooks and see what Kotter and other change gurus would say. But let’s try some thinking first, consider what might have been needed to make the Roman way of life stick and see what conclusions we can draw for ourselves about change. I think: The Romans enslaved many of the indigenous people who did not benefit as much from the changes, so there would be little urgency...