A fundamental and critical ‘ingredient’ of change, of betterment, is people. A true change does not occur until people undergo some change. Though most of us would agree with this, we sometimes do not take this issue seriously. For instance, when companies wish to optimize their work process, they make use of advance automation technologies,  impose standards, and develop trainings. When things do not end up as planned, the managers say, “There is a problem with human resources; they lack of motivation to gain opportunities from advance technologies.” Thus, we often blame people for their ‘unreadyness’ to take up change being implemented. In the same fashion, government agencies often blame local communities for their lack of participation in the implemented development projects.

            Thus, when things do not work as we wish, instead of looking carefully into how people actually react to, and take participation in changes, we tend to blame them as resisting to change. Of course, quite often people resist to change, or even oppose it. However, we could never know precisely which individuals really resist to change, and whether their resistance comes from disagreement or from different perception regarding the goals of the change.

            On the other side, employees or faculty members sometimes resist to new rules or performance criteria introduced by their leaders. They respond to these by saying, “We agree that we need organizational transformation to bring a higher prosperity to us, but the executives just ask too much from us ...” or “It is the main responsibility of the leaders to make change happen, not ours.” Thus, even though agreement has been achieved through out an organization, people may not be fully aware that they themselves are a critical factor of change.  

            Since people aspect is critical to change, it is very important that we understand people (either those under our level—the juniors, or above—the bosses) in dealing with change. And the most effective way to understand people is listening. Listening is a main ‘channel’ to get to know about other (people), since it is through listening that we gain meaningful information about other from the most valid source of information (i.e., the people themselves). Although there are other useful sources of information about other people like statistics, charts, questionnaires, human mediators, spies, they are all secondary.

Fruitful listening come out of trust

            On one occasion, in a directional meeting, the director raised the issue of integration across units, as this is believed to be important to increase overall efficiency of the organization. In response, most of the attendees were telling the director how important and unique their respective units were, and how good they had been performing so far. Since each unit manager was emphasizing the importance and uniqueness of each individual unit, the director failed to find a criterion to implement integration policy. He did not see how the units could be classified into fewer, larger in size, divisions.

            After a few weeks passing by, the director changed his strategy. At this time he organized the same meeting, but raised different issues. He asserted in the meeting that there was urgency for the organization to increase capacity and to create bigger opportunity, and for this, integration of competencies across units would be instrumental. Quite surprisingly, the attendees responded in a very different ways. The attendees expressed their agreement that integration policy was very important for increasing capacity. They mentioned that had the units been able to integrate their strengths, bigger opportunities would have been in their hands. They said that they would not resist to integration policy imposed from the top, as long as their individual unit identity and independency were maintained to some extent. Thus, in the first meeting, the director failed to get meaningful words from the attendees, and in the later meeting, he was more successful. The way the (very same) director position himself seems to influence the way the attendees talk to him.

            Listening occurs within interaction, not outside of interaction. When someone tells us a story, he/she would expect that we (the listener) will react in a certain way.  If we are able to position our self as a trustworthy ‘delegate’ of the speaker, we might get many words from the speaker to make us understand what he/she wants. If the speaker do not have trust in us (the listener), he/she is likely to speak without sincerity, though he/she might still talk politely, by using nice words, and with smiles.

            Thus, listening is not the same as taking other’s argument/opinion to be criticized.  Suppose that a father, with anger, asks his son, “Why did you do such a bad thing?!!” The son might choose to remain silent, or say something defensive, “No, father, … I did not do that.” The son might realize that whatever answer he gives to the ‘why’ question, his father would disagree and gets more reasons to remain anger. The response of the son would be different if the father asks, “As you see, what you did have brought you into trouble. So, what can I do the help you?” 

Good listening deserves patience

            Sometimes we (as listener) feel uncomfortable when the speaker we listen to do not say words we expect. Often we get upset when the speaker say words in opposition to what we believe to be true. When such feelings fill our heart, we start to counter what the speaker say, word by word. If this happens, then the listening stops. And we get into a battle of arguments. Thus, different from hearing, listening demands for patience and sincerity. For listening to continue, sometimes we need to sacrifice our desire for demonstrating intellectual authority, or power, for the sake of understanding about the speaker.          

2.2  Learning from listening

            When we learn about something, we get more knowledge, either theoretical knowledge or practical knowledge, or both.  We acquire this knowledge either through analytical thinking, deductive reasoning, or intuitive grasping/comprehending. Although we gain a substantial amount of knowledge from formal education, we also gain much knowledge from our lifelong experience.

            In daily life we encounter various circumstances, events, phenomena from which we make perception, conception, and comprehension. Sometimes we do this by intention, sometimes not; sometimes concisely, sometimes not. All these make up our knowledge and shape our way of perceiving things and people.  And from this we learn about what is good and what is bad. Thus, learning is instrumental in broadening our perspective, sharpening our vision about good and bad, and identifying opportunities for betterment.

Learning about others

            We get to know others from interaction, especially communication. There is no formal education program, nor textbook that we can use to understand our friends, our colleagues, or our beloved family. A grand theory on human being does not tell us why our friend behaves in certain ways in response to our action. Any individual has unique character, and has developed their own framework to act and react. The only way we could learn in sufficient detail about other people is through communication within interaction and engagement. And the critical aspect of communication is listening.

            When we learn about others, we do not merely ask for what is good theory or method, or how to reason properly. What we would fruitfully learn from others are how others see things, how others value things, and how others choose certain actions to get what they perceive as good. These are key subjects that we need  to learn, if we really want to understand about others.

Learning about one self

            While we may learn about other people from communication, we could also learn from it about our self; that is, we could learn about our self from how people react or make comments upon us. For example, we could learn about our self from critics addressed to us from our friends. Sometimes, we get more meaningful critics from our enemies that have spent great deal of effort looking out our weakness. Another source for learning about our self is reflection upon our own experience. 

Learning from ongoing changes

            Another useful source for learning about change is the ongoing change itself. When we see things or people are changing, we can make comparison between the old and the newer ones, and grasping from this difference what is good and what is bad. Thus, change itself could become a source for learning about good and bad, and about better change.

2.3  Change and knowledge about it

            We voluntarily undertake actions for changes if we believe that some goodness will come out of these changes. In this matter, it is important to note two things regarding our knowledge about change: firstly, our knowledge about goodness that we wish for may be incorrect, or imprecise. Secondly, the changes that we conceive as necessary may not be the right ones that will actually bring about the expected outcome. In the first case, there may be a gap between what we desire for and what we really need for our own betterment. And  in the second case, there may be a gap between the pre-conceived process of changes, and the actually required changes. These gaps can, in principle, be eliminated through various kinds of learning.

            Thus, it is important to liar from our past failures. Sometimes, we fail to get what we wish, despite tremendous effort we have undertaken to pursue what we wish. Quite often that we fail because what we wish for turns out to be not what we really need for our own goodness. The source of such a failure could be the lack of knowledge about our self.

            The meaning of change used in this context is  broader and deeper than that of mechanism. Though seem similar, mechanism and change differ in two aspects: certainty and novelty. People design a mechanism to ensure the emergence of impacts based on specific steps and pre-conditioned cause-effect relations. In other words, a mechanism is built upon things we already know and cause-effect relations we already keep under control.  When a mechanism is accomplished, there is nothing genuinely new with the impact that emerges. Thus in mechanism, certainty comes at the price of novelty.

            On the other hand, even though people may design change, there are certainties in place. We are not certain about the right steps to undertake; we can not force people to accept 100 % the change we design; and we are not 100 % sure whether the objectives we wish for are, in fact, achievable. People develop models, undertake simulations and predictions, but still, often they are made surprised with ‘strange’ things occurring along the way of changes. Thus, uncertainties seem to be inherent in changes.

            A true or genuine betterments in life are seldom the result of a mechanistic process. If everything about tomorrow is known with certainty today, then there is nothing genuinely new when tomorrow events take place. Uncertainty is ‘out there’ to provide a ‘room’ for true betterment to emerge.        

3.  LLC Cycle and Values

            A better future would come to reality only when certain changes take place, and people is key to change (and also a critical part of future betterment).  Thus, to manage for better future, it is important to understand aspects of changes, to understand people, and to understand how people could deal with change they live in. LLC cycle provides a simple framework to understand this, and hence, to manage for a better future.

            People have different views on what better means, and different views on what is not so good with the present condition. People also differ in valuing things they regard as good. When people talk about changes they want, they do not always express explicitly/clearly what things we believe to be good.

            For instance, when we talk about ‘good governance,’ and want some change to get better governance, sometimes we are not fully aware of what is really better when the ‘good governance’ actually take place. We do not ask whether transparency will promote sincere communication throughout the company, or whether accountability will promote learning across units.

            When university researchers are asked what they want  for change, typically they would say they want a rise in financial support for their research projects. If they are asked about what goodness will come out of their projects, they would say papers, patents or knowledge advancement. And if they are asked further about what goodness that will ultimately come out, they may not have further answers.

            Thus in our daily life, we do not always deal with ‘ultimate’ goodness questions. We more often deal with intermediary questions, and a shorter way to get intermediary good nesses. Since we are often endowed with partial knowledge regarding goodness, and partial knowledge regarding changes,  the cycle of listen-learn-change becomes important as this helps us to shape changes in a better direction. 

The Listen-Learn-Change Cycle

     -         The first stage: listen > learn > change

Here, we listen to people that we think as critical for change to occur. From this we learn about what people wish for, the way people see good things, and the way people           see the present situation. We also learn from listening to other about our own way  in seeing good things, and whether what we wish is really good for us and for others. Having had a clearer vision of what goodness to wish for, and about various conditions and opportunities of the present, actions can then be conceived, planed, and undertaken. Sometime, to change our self is a critical part of the action.

-         The cycle: change > listen > learn > further change

When change does occur as a result of the actions, we need to take lesson from it without waiting until some desired impact to emerge. This entails listening to people involved in the process of change and finding out what are really going on. From this we may acquire better knowledge of the ongoing changes, and could then better justify whether it is the right change that will bring about the desired outcomes. And then, some adjustment on the actions could be undertaken to shape the changes in a better direction.

            The LLC cycle would suggest that in our daily life, it is important to become a good listener, and to learn form others in every form of interactions we could engaged in.  From listening and learning we may acquire better knowledge about what is better or worse, and how certain actions can actually be taken to effectively bring about betterment for us, and for others. This does not mean that by performing LLC cycle we will always get what we wish for. We may fail to undertake changes we plan (since we lack proper knowledge on the right changes), or we may get disappointed with what objective we aimed for (since it turns out that it is not what we really need). Nevertheless, if we keep in listening and learning during the course of changes, we will get at least two valuable things: a better social relation from being a good listener, and a better knowledge from learning.