What a manager does and how it is done can be categorised by Henri Fayol's four functions of management: Planning, Organising, Leading and Controlling. Through these functions managers can be catalysts for change or by definition change agents – "People who act as catalysts and manage the change process." (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulter, 2000, p.438) Wether performing the role of the change agent or not, change is an integral part of a manager's job. Change is "An alteration in people, structure or technology." (Robbins et al., 2000, p.437) Change occurs within and around organisations today at an unprecedented speed and complexity. Change poses threats and creates opportunities. The fact that change creates opportunities is
"Planning cannot eliminate change. Changes will happen regardless of what management does."(Robbins et al., 2000, p.437) Planning just enables us to best cope with and manage change. Change can be modelled by two different metaphors: calm-waters and white-water rapids. The calm waters model involves unfreezing changing and refreezing, this is also the some as Lewin's model of change. We have seen that planning is a tool that can be used to predict change. In this environment of predicability the calm waters metaphor is an apt model. The organisation is in a stable environment and can anticipate change so it goes through a process of unfreezing, changes implemented to overcome differences and meet new goals, and refreezing to keep changes in effect and return to stable environment. Total quality management uses this model. "Total quality management is essentially a continuous, incremental change program. It is compatible with the calm waters metaphor…" (Robbins et al., 2000, p.454) Total quality management continually seeks out problems and implements changes as they strive to ever improve their organisation's efficiency and effectiveness. Plans are difficult to develop for a dynamic environment. "this calm waters metaphor has become increasingly obsolete as a way of describing the kind of seas that