I was 22 when I told my Dad I was getting married. He just looked up at me while getting a cup of coffee and said …
“Just remember, it’s for a helluva’ long time”.
When you’re managing a change project, hopefully it’ll be for a helluva’ long time?
We hear a lot today about how difficult change is on people and how they fight it, and they do. But does it have to be that way for everyone? I don’t think so. If you recognize a couple of key things about people, your change efforts will move along like melting snow instead of inching along at glacier speed. Change isn’t easy but it can work better than it does in most organizations.
The first thing to recognize is that people are used to change. It’s happening all around them every single day. The seasons changes, our neighbors are moving, even time changes twice a year. It isn’t the change that gets us, it’s the uncertainty that change brings. That’s not just a play on Webster’s words, it’s a fact. Changes that people don’t understand will give you trouble. For most people, the lack of understanding drives their resistance, not the changes.
To help people move through change you have to start with honesty. You have to lay it on the line, in a respectful and kind way, but lay the truth out there. You have let them know what’s happening, how it impacts them, or doesn’t; and you have to continue to tell them the truth throughout the project. You have to help them see the situation as it relates to them.
Once you’ve told them you have to reinforce the fact that they are responsible, individually, to make their choice in how to respond to the changes. But they have to know, beyond a doubt, that the organization is changing. It will hopefully with them rather than without them, but it is changing.
In extreme and hopefully exceptional cases, you need to help them understand that they might have to make a choice. That choice is to stay or go. That is the first choice in coping with change. Do I stay or do I go? If you go, then you focus on finding a new career. If you stay, by virtue of that decision you become part of the solution and you are looking forward within your organization.
Coping only becomes hard for people who stay when they don’t become part of the solution. It’s when they sit in the streets of change and disrupt traffic. That is when their anxiety grows and over time they become miserable. You have to deal with those people privately, one-on-one. You have to help them understand the need to make the ’stay or go’ decision. You owe them that honesty.
After being an atheist for most of my life I became a Christian at around 29. It had been a rocky road, so I was sure my Mother would be happy with the changes that took place in the years following my conversion. I was talking with her one day about my new life when she laid a great one on me.
She said, “I think religion is a good thing, as long as you don’t let it interfere with your life”.
Unfortunately for many people, change is viewed with about as much logic as Mom used on me that day. You have to manage people’s reaction to change. You have to be honest in your communications and most will ‘get it’. For those that don’t you’ll have to help them see the reality of the situation. Only then can they make the right decisions for them and therefore for you.
Show them the facts and let reality be the judge.
Ed Kugler
Ed Kugler has been living change since the jungles of Vietnam where he was a Marine Sniper for two-years in the Vietnam War. He came home to a country he hadn’t left and began work as a mechanic and truck driver. Since then he has worked his way into the executive suite of Frito Lay, Pepsi Cola and Compaq Computer where he was Vice President of Worldwide Logistics, a position he achieved with no college degree. Ed left in 1997 to consult and write. He is the author of Dead Center – A Marine Sniper’s Two Year Odyssey in the Vietnam War and five other books and counting. He regularly consults with some o the nations leading companies on organizational change and coaches individuals to make the most of their lives. Ed is the father of three, grandfather to three and has been married to the same woman for 38 years and counting. http://www.nomorebs.com http://www.edkugler.com