06 Jun Adapting to Change (My trip to Louisiana)
In the last few days, I have been in Louisiana to facilitate one of my favorite topics: Adapting to Change. We discussed:
- The nature of change,
- The various change management models that explain how change works,
- The types of change resistance and how to overcome them,
- And more.
As much as this session benefitted the participants, it was also helpful to me. It gave me another opportunity to refresh my memory and regroup.
We all need a constant reminder that:
- Time and Change are older than human history. Both were created before we showed up in this universe.
- Like Time, change is constant. They don’t need our permission to keep going at their own pace.
- No one likes change, including you and me!
By default, we are wired to resist change. That is why we must be intentional and proactive about adapting to change, especially now when change happens faster and in almost every sector.
We also need to remind ourselves that people have some strong personal reasons why they endorse or resist change. We can’t categorize people based on how they reacted to changes in the past. In the past, many change experts divided people into three fixed classes:
- Endorsers,
- Resisters, and
- Fence-sitters.
Boxing people into predetermined classes is easy, but it doesn’t reflect reality. A person who was an Endorser of a change that just ended may become either a Resister or Fence-Sitter against the next change agenda.
What have you learned about change lately?