My wife recently upgraded her phone. And it was a MAJOR upgrade, as she had not upgraded in 4-years. She found herself using many new features, and learning about other new features that she did not fully understand …
And then … I realised she was embracing change.
Many organisations need to change to keep pace, yet they often have problems changing. The problems are numerous, but are often related to employees / staff / key personnel resisting the change, instead desiring to keep things unchanged.
Why was she embracing change? What was she doing differently that was causing her to embrace THIS change? I think one major factor was that she was INITIATING the change. In thinking back over my career and life, the changes I have tended to resist have been the ones that have been imposed on me when I did not fully understand the need for the change.
One example from my career (before I became self-employed) that was implemented by my employer was a new safety program. The program had two parts – one verbal part and one written part. The written part was horrible – it required about 90% of the total effort. The explanation for the change I received was minimal, trivialising, condescending, and did not address my concerns about the significant time involvement of the written portion, so I turned a blind eye to various issues and did not participate. I resisted the change. Prior to that I had been active in corporate safety, but the change turned me off. The fact that I turned a blind eye was not auditable, so I could not be punished for not participating.
I resisted the change because I did not understand the benefit of the change, and management had not invested the time and effort to get me to embrace the change. I was not alone – it had a very low acceptance by the entire staff. I cannot confirm this because I left the company a few months after this, but I believe the program died. Opportunity lost. Too bad, the oral part of the program was excellent, and with modifications to the timesheet system the written part could have worked well.
Early in my career, I was developing some bad habits. A corporate reorganisation resulted in me getting a new boss. This gentleman had excellent organisational skills, an aggressive can-do attitude, fearless delegation tendencies, and absolutely no technical comprehension of anything I did. He wanted me to change the way I worked so he could understand what I was doing – it required a significant reduction in doing “real work” and much more time on presentations and presentation preparation. I found I was spending more time educating him (and often educating him again and again and again) and less time doing my job (using my definition of doing my job). My productivity fell, my performance appraisals suffered, and we could not make anything work. I was not embracing the change he was imposing on me, and he was unable to inspire me to embrace the change. Looking back – it was a very simple situation – I had not learned how to keep my boss informed of what I was doing (like I said, I had developed some bad habits). The situation escalated to a no-rules shouting match. He sent me home and told me to come back Monday. That Monday, we both realised something had to change. We discussed what needed to change, we mutually developed a plan, and we understood why the changes were needed. We both embraced the change. He transformed from one of my worst bosses ever to one of my best, and I changed from a surly troublemaker to become his top performer. I am still using the lessons he taught me to this day – the need to inform effectively has become a key part of my training delivery.
I am sure I am normal (my wife will probably disagree) – in order to embrace change, I need to understand the need for the change and actively look for ways to make it happen. Then it will be successful. Effort is not needed in telling me, effort is needed in ensuring I understand.
We would like to hear how you have successfully (or unsuccessfully) embraced change in your career.