Making Change Happen
if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotThe world is constantly changing and most of us struggle to keep up. ‘Change management’ is a horrible phrase that often provokes the sort of resistance in people that it is supposed to mitigate against. We are all to a lesser or greater extent set in our ways, and don’t want to face uncertainty.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein
A lot of the work we do is about change - specifically using learning and communications to help overcome barriers to change. Sometimes we are helping bring about big organisational or systems change, other times we are working on supporting smaller more subtle changes at an individual level - such as a change in attitude or behaviour.
One thing we have noted is that ‘change’ itself is a dirty word. People would rather talk about transformation or evolution or insert-another-synonym-here. Change scares people. It is called a ‘comfort zone’ for a reason - most of us would like things to stay just the way they are. But only by stepping out of that zone will any of us do something remarkable.
When thinking about how to overcome resistance to change, we take a human-centred approach and seek to understand the context and individuals involved. Then we can work on:
Tapping into their dissatisfaction of the status quo.
Helping them visualise the benefits change will bring.
Providing practical steps to help them take action.
We often find the ‘field truth’ of those most affected by organisational change is very different from the ‘corporate truth’ of leaders - and what we do needs to address that gap. Involving the audience in the creation process has the benefit of creating champions and early adopters; cheerleaders for the resources they help develop.