Change is an inherent part of our lives – we change our clothes in response to the weather, change our jobs when we see a new opportunity, change where we live to better suit our lifestyles.
Whilst change is possibly the most regular occurrence in our lives, it’s often the most disruptive, especially when it happens in an organisation. It’s also one of the most common things our clients ask us for help with. So why does it unsettle us?
We were recently inspired by these words from the Director of Literacy and Oracy in a school publication.
"Change is our constant companion and our most persistent source of discomfort. And yet for all our awareness of change, we remain deeply attached to permanence".
We’ve long maintained that trying to manage change is a rather futile exploit.
By its very nature, change takes the lead, so it’s better to aim for a response, rather than trying to find some mechanism for harnessing a thing that isn’t really a thing, but more of a process.
Here again, the Director states more eloquently "we never truly master change, but we can learn to join its dance with greater grace’’.
The most common reaction we see to change is a mix of fear and some form of resistance. But dig a little deeper and nearly always, the fear is not of change, but of the unknown, and the resistance is not to the change, but to the comfort and familiarity of our rhythms and rituals being upended.
When the reason for the change is explained it can minimise the fear of the unknown. When people are involved in working out ‘how’ they can adapt and adjust, resistance is reduced and the rhythms and rituals that will support the change process can evolve.
So when we help our clients respond to change, the belief in the power of collective response is at the heart of our thinking. For change to happen, it needs to be people centered.
Is our ability to change important?
In a constantly evolving world, our ability to respond to change has become an essential skill personally and professionally.
Change has always been a part of our lives – it’s how we evolve. Those who respond to change in agile vs resistant ways, evolve better and quicker.
The very nature of change requires us to develop new skills, deal with things that challenge us, or work out how we can do things differently. It’s a catalyst for improvement, development and growth. Change is important and so, therefore, is how we respond to it. Rather than look at change as something to be feared or resisted, we can use our skills, strengths and experiences to evolve. Read more in our blog titled 'Is My Audience Misbehaving'.
Can we learn from change?
We’re approaching the five-year anniversary of the last lockdown in the UK. That moment in time that placed us in a unique scenario, requiring us to change how we did things at an unprecedented pace and scale.
Working with the writers’ organisation 26, we were involved in a fascinating project designed to capture how things changed during these extraordinary times through a series of 1-1 conversations that served as a snapshot and an authentic record for the future.
26 founder John Simmons identified three powers that we might take as ongoing learnings from this unique period of change:
The power of reflection: with greater time to think, we can reflect on and identify what matters most.
The power of connection: we learnt that empathy is an essential human value, as it requires us to see things from another perspective, not just our own.
The power of reconnection: being deprived of live access to arts and culture, while benefitting from science and technology, strengthened our forward appreciation of both. Read the original conversations and the reflections here.
