#140
Purpose: The purpose of this project is to practice developing a change management plan.
Overview: Create a change management plan for a real or hypothetical situation. You may create a plan that is based on a past change or a future change that is happening in your personal, Toastmasters, or professional life. Share your change management plan with your club in a 5- to 7-minute speech.
It is not a report on what you learned from the project, but an overview of your plan and how it will benefit you and the group the change affects.
Speech Title: City Connect
Script:
A very good evening TMs and guests. For today's speech I have decided to tell you all about my hopping from one city to another in the last 6-8 years. What's more is that I did a 30-day blog challenge on it, which I will tell you all about in my next speech so, stay tuned!
Today's project objective is for me to tell you how I went about handling, coping, and managing change. It's interesting for me to have reflected on these changes because by no means were they trivial. Moving cities and staying there for a period of more than 1 year - that's a pretty long time.
After being born and brought up entirely in Mumbai, I went to Hyderabad to pursue my engineering for 4 years. Luckily, my college campus was situated far far away from the city and I was shielded from the harsh realities, whatever they may have been.
What all changes did I have to overcome to find my peace again?
One of the biggest changes was living away from my parents. I had never done that before and living by myself, though in a protected environment, was still a totally new experience.
A couple of other smaller changes were getting used to disciplining myself wrt balancing academics with sports, hanging out with friends while also having time to explore my own interests, and getting accustomed to eating food that was made by someone other than my mother.
4 years after adjusting to that environment, and somehow managing to ingest spicy mess food, I had another change coming my way. I was being posted in Chennai for my 4th year internship.
To be honest, Chennai wasn't as new to me as Hyderabad was because I have relatives here whom I've visited several times so, I know what the city is like. Since i'm already familiar with the language, that wasn't a problem either. What i had to change, however, was to upgrade my level of thinking and explore a whole new side to independence.
Oh yeah! This was going to be a real corporate world experience. No more 4 walls of the campus. It was a new phase. I initially lived in a PG where food was available 3 times a day and then moved into an apartment where I had to learn to make my own food. If I had known what I know now, boy would I have been better off. I wouldn't have suffered so many tummy aches. Anyway, there's always a first time for everything and I'm just glad to have gone through that process of making the unknown become slightly more known.
In this project, the course in base camp mentioned that in order to create a successful change management plan, one must do the following 5 steps:
Analyze circumstances
Know your objective
Consider your options
Collect and analyze data
Choose your metrics
How did I go about implementing these steps when moving across cities? For starters, I prepared my mind in advance on how the environment could possibly be. I read up on Google on what to expect and told myself it's going to be great. Analyze circumstances - check. When moving to Hyderabad and Chennai, I had to consciously tell myself to slow down. Mumbai being an extremely fast-moving city, everybody dashing [WOTD] to get to places, there's no time for leisure. As the poet W. H. Davies writes "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?". It was exactly like that. I had to tell myself to get used to slowing down and enjoying the moment.
Second, I knew what my objectives were going to be. Hyderabad - 4 yrs of hostel life. Lots of learnings , lots of fun. Chennai - 4 years and counting. Corporate life, more professionalism, and focus on serious work.
Coming to options - did I have options? Well, when considering city choices, yes I did have options, but when I chose my university and my place of work, the city was automatically chosen for me. In hindsight, they worked out perfectly and I have no regrets.
Next was to collect and analyze data. While I did not do this during the time I was living my daily life in those cities, I did manage to do so when writing this speech. Again, in retrospect, it's been wonderful.
Lastly, choosing metrics. I have chosen to share with you all the positives or success metrics of me having lived in each of these cities. If I had to share downsides, I'd probably have to think long and hard. It's not that there weren't any negatives at all, it's more like the pros outweighed the cons by a large margin. Personally, I enjoy change. I enjoy embracing new things and satisfying my curiosity when moving into uncharted waters.
In conclusion, I'd just like to say that no matter where you are or what you do, just remember one thing - change is inevitable. Change is the only constant.
The easier you adapt to it, the better it will be for you to embrace it.
Thank you, over to you TMOD.
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