Managing Change - the media way

On one of the busiest train concourses in London, commuters can be observed randomly criss-crossing one another heading for their destinations.

Whilst as good as clockwork, the 8.10 a.m commute from your house to work will be a harrowing journey of people packed into carriages resisting the temptation and scourn of other passengers to move up so others can join.

In each case a simple remedy beyond further stock and concourse investments may be at hand.

In the case of Victoria simply placing pedestrian lanes by colouring the ground with arrows pointing the way might ease the daily collisions.

On the trains indented sole marks indicating where passengers could stand would force even the most reluctant that there is room to move.

Both these instances involve change.

That is management change.


All Change
The solution may be techincal or otherwise creative, but often it involves changing the mindset of management reluctant to spend any more money without immediate returns.

Videojournalism and the new paradigm of multimedia is like that.

It could transform your fortunes, but how and presumably not overnight is the thought.

If you've been privy to the Telegraph's story of how they changed ( i really should post this video some time) it is instructive for the will and determination to lead the way.

For many months a core group of managers travelled the world visiting newsroom upon newsroom gathering and deciphering "intelligence", then processed that to set up the distinctive hub which gelled web and print.

Most change sparks thoughts of a revolution and the Telegraph has not been inure from criticism of change.

Internally, it starts, and then it spreads out with an envangelical zeal bringing others on the way.

Change happens all the time around us and we all cope in some way.


We're all changlings
You'll get up tomorrow having to negotiate something you didn't do the same way the previous day.

But the idea of change can often scare us.

It smacks of "in the with the new and out with the old".

It is a vision and hostage of our fortunes.

And at some point when the zeitgeist crystallises we have very little option; we simply can't wait any longer, for the paradigm has engulfed us. It's no longer a fashion - here today gone tomorrow- it's a way of life.

A new style is born.

The web was not going to last and it did.

Video was a pipe dream but we're awakening every day to new possibilities.

Whether you're Vjing or not, whether you're a fortune 100 company or not, whether you're a super tanker media company or not, change changes all the while, over lengths of time.

And it's not whether we can buy new shinny toys to do our latest bidding for us, but whether we're ideologically prepped ourselves for the ineavitable.

Change happens and in our organisation we make allowances for it; we'ne built in the change factor.

The BBC as you'll find out in our video blog interview has innovators within its rank.

You might even call them creative change merchants spotting the new new thing.

They're not alone.

But, but we could learn from this thesis.

The signs are we warm to change in principle as Clinton and Obama tell their stories, but the realities ahead can be awkard if we haven't properly managed those doling out and those on the end of change.

The days of a job for life was kicked into the long grass long ago; the days of continuing on a linear curve are now equally messy.

2008 - this could be the year video breaks free.

Or is that too radical a change.