[Note from Pat: This is a guest post from my friend Christian Knutson. Chris is an expert in both engineering and leadership, with decades of experience in the military and as an entrepreneur. He’s the author of www.engineerleader.com, an excellent read for anyone who reads this blog.]

Enter Christian:

Whether you like it or not, every thing in your life is changing.  The projects you’re working are changing – perhaps progressing or falling behind.  Your feelings about the work you’re engaged in changes, sometimes daily.  Your mind, body… OK… every aspect of your life is changing.  Get it?  Everything changes.

If you’re on this blog I bet you’re an engineer.  Remember the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics?  It’s basically an expression of a fact that over time, things change such that eventually they result in thermodynamic equilibrium.  In our personal and professional lives you can apply the law like this:  don’t actively add energy to achieving goals and you’ll end up in equilibrium.  What’s that look like?  You’re the first person let go when lay offs happen; or the person passed-over for promotion.  Or the one that finds it impossible to get hired into a job.  The more things change the more you need to lead.

Change Leadership

Change leadership is about initiating or managing change.  These words are usually reserved for the corporate boardroom or new “transformation” experiment the public agency’s implementing.  But wait, you can take the role of change leader in your own life.  What it looks like when you leading change in your life is this:  you have the ability to motivate and alert yourself to the need to enact specific changes in the way things are done when it’s necessary.  Suit fits a bit too tight?  You initiate a change before you end up having to have gastro bypass surgery.  Company’s facing a downturn in project opportunities on the program you work?  You start getting involved in other programs, even without compensation, so that when the ax swings you’re still standing.  The new economy is going to be based on sustainability and resiliency but you don’t know anything about these?  You seek out continuing education and start reading voraciously to establish your self as an expert.  Sound ludicrous?  How does becoming irrelevant and one of the masses sound.  Yeah, not so good.  This is change leadership, of yourself, in action.

Setting Change into Action

What does setting change in to motion look like?  Here are four elements of the change leader:

1. Supports the need for change
2. Creates their own for change
3. Personally engages in their change
4. Champion’s continuous change

Why It Matters

Because you need to be engaged in determining what changes in your life, personally or professionally, or be relegated to the masses that take change as it comes.  And it usually comes in large doses of “bad”.  This stuff isn’t BS.  Organizations that didn’t embrace change lay strewn on the ground like a spilled box of cereal.  Kodak, GM, or Sony anyone?  Organizations need change leadership or they become irrelevant.  No different, you need change leadership (the home-grown internal type) or you’ll be come irrelevant.  In a world of financial uncertainty, market upheavals, and diminishing project opportunities you can either be on the front edge of professional growth and increasing your competitive advantage, or you can stand by and watch someone else – the change leader – make it happen.

“Change is hard because people over estimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving it up.”  J. Belassco and R. Stayer

If you like this post, check out:

Operating In Ruts

Predicting Your Future

Developing Career Resilience