Perceived or real change

Quite often we hear about change and the amount of transformation that our times are going through and probably we all agree about the considerable amount of alteration going on around us. Interestingly enough I was recently reading a piece from professor David A Buchanan(1) who argues against the perception of “tremendous” change that affects different times and generations. He suggests to carry out the "armchair experiment" by looking around us in the different domestic, work and society contexts and gauge how much has changed in the last 10, 50 and 100 years. I am not sure where I stand on amplitude and pace of change and our times, to some extend I tend to agree with professor Buchanan and I have a few reserves at the same time. I am, in essence, advocating a contingent approach.

Moving away from the fascinating theory of organizational development and change into my professional daily life and experience, I can clearly say that I have noticed a good deal of change. Whether it’s a perception or real transformation it’s quite difficult to say but what I have noticed by meeting more and more wind farms owners, operators and investors, is that things are moving quickly and a shift in the approach towards knowledge is quite noticeable. With tariffs for both new installations going down and the prospect of competing in the open market for some of the ageing assets in Europe, the industry is getting a good degree of shake out. Whether we classify the latest trends as big or predictable changes and whether we think the pace is high or slow, is probably a bit less relevant than the countermeasures that operators are ready to take. The need for data and knowledge of how the farms and the machines work is becoming more and more pressing. It’s possible to argue (or wish) that the years of inefficiencies related to a silo thinking approach covered by abundant tariffs, are probably becoming a bit obsolete. Integrated knowledge of how the wind turbines are designed and operate in the field, is becoming more and more relevant and it’s a topic that all the operators in the industry are interested to hear about.

Having experienced the dawn of this trend, we have tried to address it by designing a training course that offers a broader overview of the main subjects and techniques of the modern wind turbine technology in the context of preconstruction, machine design and operational implications. The course is at its 3rd edition and the increasing interest and range of topics have required an extension of its duration to 2.5 days.

This is probably another argument in favour of continuous or contingent change.

In case you are interested in our course please follow the URL: https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6395278116754984960/

G.Ferraro

References:

1: A S Buchanan, 2015, I Couldn’t Disagree More Eight Things about Organizational Change that We Know for Sure but Which are Probably Wrong, Perspectives on Change, Taylorfrancis