Workplace Change Challenge - Little Fish Big Impact

How do you prepare for workplace change?

For sure, change is unceasing in your career and in the workplace.

In the main, organisational change is concerned with people, processes and technology.

Organisations are continually developing. They are under pressure to compete and be prosperous on an infinite loop.

Change in the workplace is frequent. Be it expansion, cost savings, productivity drives, restructuring, adhering to new laws, exploring new ideas or technological advancement.

Change equals growth and survival for organisations. But how good at change is an organisation? Some research tells us not very good with an eye-watering failure rate.

a failure rate of around 70 per cent of all change programmes initiated.
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Maybe this should not be shocking. Organisations comprise of people and people just do not appreciate change. People prefer to maintain the status quo, even if the change is positive.

When faced with a workplace change, what is your first thought? It means uncertainty and disruption to routines.

Our Animal Instinct

We are hard-wired to suspect change, even to see it as a threat. Part of the brain, the amygdala, reads change as a threat and releases the hormones for fight, flight or freeze. Your body reacts to change by sensing it needs to defend you from it!

We evolved to strive to plan, control and predict our many life circumstances. For example, we associate routines with survival.

On a basic level, we need to eat, exercise, and sleep regularly to survive.So when people including senior leaders are presented with something new they will resist it. Even if it is a change that will pay off.

Often, we identify organisational change with stress because we react when we feel threatened. It happens when we are in a situation we feel we cannot manage or control.

So what should you resolve to do when faced with workplace change?

An important starting point for dealing with change is to assess your current state and your future state. Ask yourself what the change means to you, your routines, and what you can influence or control.

Managing Change

How can you turn change from a threat into an opportunity? There are many change theories to consider. We can consider Lewin (2) to be the patriarch of change management. His iterative model focuses on the personal conditions of change.

Change is the physical condition, and the transition is our inner psychological experience.

In stage one, we scrutinise our keenness to change. Force Field Analysis tells us if the driving force exceeds the restraining force.

Stage two is where transition happens, with stage three helping us to discover the purpose of making the change final.

Lewin’s Force Field Analysis is an authoritative key tool adopted to interpret what is needed for change at an organisational and personal level. Analyse the positive (driving) and the negative (restraining) forces which affect a change moving from the current state to the future state.

Determining the driving and restraining forces means we can assess which ones are most critical. Then we take the steps to increase driving forces and reduce the critical hindering forces.

Lewin’s theory is an effective structure to apply to any change.

If you apply a structured approach to managing change, it can mean less stress and a healthier and happier outcome.

References:

1 – By, Rune. (2005). Organizational Change Management: A Critical Review. Journal of Change Management. 5. 369-380. 10.1080/14697010500359250.

2- Lewin, Kurt (1947). “Frontiers in Group Dynamics: Concept, Method and Reality in Social Science; Social Equilibria and Social Change”. Human Relations. 1: 5–41.

2- Lewin, Kurt (1948) Resolving Social conflicts, Harper & Brothers