Change Interrupted
For the last decade organizations have faced unprecedented speed of progression, disruption and change. The ability to keep up and absorb what is needed is stretching teams to the breaking point, leaving change initiatives incomplete or lagging day to day responsibilities as casualties. Each year more competing issues and projects are added to teams that are already overburdened. The demand this places on cognitive capacity is stretched to an all-time high in order for them to keep in step with each and every change process that is underway alongside their day job.
Organizations that are unable to scale this change pace are often left behind with aging processes, technology and programs that do not allow them to advance as quickly as their competitors. Few have mastered the ability or agility required to successfully complete the multiple changes, leaving many high performing leaders and employees teetering at the edge of burnout as a result.
And that was all before Covid-19!
If you thought the change pace was fast before, welcome to warp speed. Is it possible that we are witnessing the disruption of change at this moment in time?
The nature of the way we approach change seems to be…. changing.
Covid has imposed instant change in most every area of our lives globally and collectively. In some industries wholesale change that would have taken 10 years is happening within a week. Industries like the medical industry for example have shifted their model completely moving to phone and video appointments. Working at home is the new normal for anyone working any type of intellectual position, and whole career streams have all but disappeared in some industries. Personally we are distancing, staying home more and have in most cases completely restructured how we interact with our family, friends and community in general.
Some of the change has been welcomed, with many saying, “why did we think this would take so long!”. Other change has been less so, and in fact trying to continue with the old normal is simply not possible or the new way is not yet clear. In either case the pressure that has been injected to these changes is the same.
Traditionally, this type of instant or sudden change is referred to as “shock change” in change management. As a change practitioner there are a handful of tactics that could be recommended for how to encounter and move a team or individual forward in this type of change, most are focussed on realigning to whatever new process or environment was created as a result of the shock change that was experienced.
The focus is stabilization. There is very little structured change process that is implemented as most of that happens before the change point occurs. In shock change intervention starts after the change point and usually requires a period of stabilization to allow people to get their bearings both mentally and emotionally before planning the next steps on any process level.
Up until now most of the regular (non-shock) change we encounter in our life is foreseeable to some degree. We usually have a window of time to conceive it, plan for it and at a basic level get ready for it in whatever way we have learned to cope with traversing change successfully.
There are key things we look for such as why is it going to change, when will it change and how long it might take. We look for how it might benefit us and what are the things that we have to give up as a result. This is our general response tendency to date and there is a fair amount of science on things that work well to navigate this type of change as well as popular change methodologies that get results.
So how does any of that change the way we are changing?
There are a few things converging at this time. One being the conditions and limitations that Covid has introduced to the world, paired with the urgency of safety. The second is the high speed of change that was already present at the start of the pandemic. The convergence of these factors has created a condition that has essentially forced our global mindset to shift the way we see and approach change. To adapt more quickly and in some cases completely abandon or expedite the “buy in” stage and go straight to “show me how to do it”.
If we can do it for this change then why not all change?
To use this new mindset for all change we need to make it permanent and the way we do that is to change the way we see the process of change. When there is no opportunity to see change until we are in it then the way to create the mental space that we need to assimilate our response is by leveraging perception.
How we choose to see change activates the way we engage with it. Until recently, many of us saw it as a process.
Both of the change perspectives that I described above are timeline driven, they have a start and end with an assumed desired outcome - three very defined measures that we move through change with that provide us with structure and a level of predictability. (which our brains love by the way)
In order for us to accommodate this new warp change landscape, we need to shift our perception to new measurement markers. If we know that we have no defined outcome to achieve (and it can’t be “back to normal”) then we must shift to a perception of evolution.
Using evolution perception we are in a gradual state of change all the time, change is ever present, it’s never truly “done”. Once we master the new system or behaviour or process, the next new one is born out of that new expertise.
This means we must allow that there is no finite outcome to be achieved. Instead the desired outcome is continual improvement and the process becomes the successful navigation of the next step and understanding there is always another step ahead, we may never be “done”. In place of the start and finish, we must see that we are living in a fluid situation, meaning that it is changing daily, weekly and monthly, that is the nature of it. Therefore we must expect to be in a continual flow of change (shifting behaviours, each one building on the last). We must learn to trust the next step will appear as we take the step.
It requires us to shift the idea of change being a process that completes and become comfortable with things not remaining the same. For larger organizations to get here it will require getting ahead of their lagging processes and technology to be able to shift to this mindset and approach. It doesn’t mean more changes faster, it means get to the place you should be now, and if that is a 10 year warp speed progression like the example above, so be it, but get there you must. One thing is certain, this rate of change is never slowing down - if your organization is behind now, it will never catch up.
There are plenty of organizations doing this now, the technology space has many who have used it successfully for some time. They understand that with each new iteration comes opportunity that didn’t exist before. Teams that have rewired their change resistance into curiosity are better able to recognize those signs.
Individuals and organizations that can cultivate this new mindset will find themselves with more cognitive capacity and agility to evolve with the pace of change ahead, understanding the opportunity it presents to expand rather than another challenge to overcome.
To learn more about how to work with change in your organization, click here.
