The Heart Of Change

I am writing my article while on board a British airways flight coming back from a business trip, I started going through my bag and found a book that was given to me as a gift from my brother and colleague Dr. Wael Kaoush, a faculty member in Harvard Medical school, and an Orthopedic consultant, during my visit to Boston, and he has asked me to read the book and write about it, the title of the book was “The heart of Change”.

And it was one of the books published by Harvard University, and is studied in management school where it discusses the lessons learnt from factual and real events of people who were able to change their institutions, corporate and community, with ecstasies in my heart from his request to write about the subject, where his assurance to make change and community reform regardless of his work as a surgeon, which is a natural act coming from any kind person realizing their message in life, their part in the community and responsibility towards human life, as true doctors only care to help humans and everything possible for their safety, physical, mental and psychological health, and is not bound by what they do in hospitals, clinics or operation rooms, such doctors have embraced with the suffering of humans and their comfort, and where many diseases are reflections of human suffering in their lives, whether it was physical, mental or psychological, doctors role is to treat humans in body, soul and mind comprehensively, thus calling Doctors from long as ‘Wise’ for what they gain due to their contribution to human suffering where they put their figures on the pulse of their communities to understand their suffering and everything negative or positive effecting the safety and health of humans beings.

The book “the Heart of Change” is a valuable book to every reform and change factor, the author identifies 6 principal steps to make any change:

1-      Raise the feeling of importance and necessity of change (Increasing Urgency), where it becomes the talk of everybody “We must do something to change the situation or to reform”.

2-      Build an ethically qualified team with the necessary aspects to achieve change and build the trust between the team individuals (Building the Team).

3-      Confirm and assure the clarity of the goals and aspirations (Get the Value Right) and help the working team to make bold steps to establish strategies to achieve bold goals and aspirations.

4-      Deliver a clear and honest message on the direction of change and the use of words, business, modern technology to facilitate communication channels between team members of to avoid any confusion and losing trust (communication for Buy-in)

5-      Overcome obstacles on ground and the psychological obstacles between team members to provide them the opportunity of changing their way of effective contribution in change (Empower Action).

6-      Develop specific success criteria’s on the path to increase motive in team members and to protect them from traps of success delayers or mystery in the definition of success (Create short-term win).

7-      Determination and not to surrender to tiredness or stop until the goal is achieved, even if the details were strenuous, and so it is necessary not to waste energies on small problems (Don’t Let UP).

8-      Assure that the team work is continuously working towards the goals regardless of all pressures that can oppose change (Make Change Strict).

Those steps are necessary to achieve any kind of change and are not the authors’ opinion but are based on field studies supported in the book by many examples with people who were able to change their communities, institutes and companies, and many other examples of people who neglected those steps and failed in achieving the necessary change.