Make your change management efforts more successful by understanding these 8 realities of change - and preparing for them accordingly.
Reality #1: Change will come to everyone - even you!
At an intellectual level, we understand the impact of change, but we really don't think it will happen to us until it actually does. We believe that change affects other people but that we're immune. It's been astutely noted that the difference between a recession and a depression is this: in a recession your next door neighbour loses his job. In a depression you lose your job. The key is to understand and accept change as a personal and concrete reality and to understand that it will affect you in the future.
Reality #2: Change is now the norm, not the exception
At a biological level, change and adaptation are normal and natural. But at an intellectual level change is anything but natural. We're taught how to read, we're taught how to write, but we aren't taught how to deal with change. It's assumed that somehow basic skills will add up and help us make changes. Maybe they did once, but events are redefining stability. No longer can we base our stability on external circumstances or conditions. All stability today is based on internal resilience. We need to develop an internal gyroscope to deal with the rapidly changing world we live in.
Reality #3: You're not imagining it: change is painful
If the corporate world has been guilty of ignoring one important aspect of change, it's that change hurts. The era of revolutionary corporate change, which is still just beginning, promises enormous economic improvement, but threatens substantial human pain. It is naïve to minimise or to discount the pain of change, whether it's for yourself or for the people that you work with.
Reality #4: It's not back to normal, but forward to normal
The past cannot explain the future. It is irrational to look forward to things getting back to "normal", the way they used to be; things will never be the same. No amount of wishing, hoping, or waiting will bring back the past. Therefore, we need to focus on the challenges of the future rather than dwell on the nostalgia of the past.
Reality #5: Change is relative
Some people and some industries are being rocked more severely by change than others. For example, I worked with a client in the utility business that was experiencing layoffs for the first time in their century-long history. This was devastating and traumatic. But in other industries, layoffs have been going on for the last several years, and are a way of life. Your present change resilience will be determined by how much change you've been accustomed to in the past.
Reality #6: The skills and beliefs needed for mastering change are transferable
When it comes to change, the world is our classroom. Whether it's at work or at home, with a spouse, or with a colleague, we have plenty of opportunities to apply what we've learned about change. You see context and circumstance may change, but truth is truth. That's why it's important to learn the fundamentals of change.
Reality #7: We're not in control of the majority of the changes that impact us
Some changes are self-initiated, while others are imposed by higher-ups or circumstance. We can no longer count on being able to choose what changes we'll have to deal with. We've got to be capable of dealing with imposed changes as well as dealing with the changes made by choice.
Reality #8: Even change itself has changed
What has changed about change? First, the speed of change is different; telecommunications broadcast world events into our living rooms as they occur. The magnitude of change is different. Because of the velocity of technological innovation, changes today are larger and more dramatic than those of the past. We've gone from new and improved to unimagined and radical. And of course there's complexity. We live in an interconnected world; change is seldom singular and the challenge is that it usually requires the input or cooperation of others if we're going to address the change.