I believe that all leaders—at every level, in all industries—would be more effective if they could add a working fluency in change to their resumes. Just as the world traveler is more nimble and better able to navigate with additional languages, today’s work asks us all to be conversational in change.<\/p>\n
Most leaders haven’t been trained in change management, and even if they have, they suffer from overload and\/or overlapping change to such a degree that they often move into reaction mode. This puts our teams and organizations on the defensive, and we pay a price in lowered employee engagement, increased conflict, bad business outcomes, etc.<\/p>\n
I don’t want to suggest that a greatly increased fluency in change work will make organizational change easy, but I have seen countless times over the last 20 years, both as an external consultant and an internal organizational development (OD) professional, that even small gains in this area can have large positive impacts.<\/p>\n
MANAGING CHANGE IN A PANDEMIC<\/strong><\/p>\n I’m writing in the most difficult time of my professional career, and perhaps yours, too. As we all wonder how to homeschool, work remotely, communicate well in new situations, build teams without some of our previous resources, etc., during this pandemic, many people are struggling. If we add to that uncertainty about the future of our particular industry, we have a situation ripe for overload and toxic change. These times are going to call upon us in ways we probably weren’t trained for.<\/p>\n The good news is there is an enormous amount of expertise we can draw from that can help us keep our heads above water, do work we’re proud of, and take care of each other along the way. Even small improvements in the concepts below—especially if they become part of your culture—can ease the pain of change and improve outcomes.<\/p>\n WHAT IS CHANGE?<\/strong><\/p>\n For our purposes, we can think of change as something that requires something new from us and our organization to be successful. It’s not business as usual. We may need new systems, new strategies, new mindsets, etc., to respond to the situation. For small tweaks, for more of the same (which, by the way, is not always bad—Apple should continue to double down on beautiful design), we don’t necessarily need a high level of fluency in change. Strategy, communication, and leadership usually will suffice.<\/p>\n One major challenge for us all is overlapping changes. We may be fairly stable in some areas while experiencing huge changes elsewhere. Or, for example, we may have a strong brand and products, but are facing 30 percent of our senior leaders retiring in the near term. Currently, we may have a personcentered, engaged culture that has quickly moved to 100 percent virtual work. Usually, there is more than enough change to manage.<\/p>\n An additional key concept is the difference between changes we choose and changes that happen to us. Both require a lot of us, but the latter category puts the pressure on leaders to really focus on the people side of change management.<\/p>\n
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