Why do we resist change?
As the saying goes, the only population who like convert are busy cashiers and wet babies. We find convert disorienting, creating within us an anxiety similar to culture shock, the unease visitors to an alien land feel because of the absence of the familiar cues they took for granted back home. With an established routine, we don't have to think! And thinking is hard work.
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Change is a firm fact of life
Is your firm is currently undergoing major changes that will affect the lives of all of its employees? These changes are probably in response to the evolving needs of your customers. They are made potential because of improvements in telecommunications and digital technology. They are likely guided by proper principles and practices of total quality management. And you can expect that they will supervene in critical improvements profitability--a success that all employees will share. Because our customers' needs are Now, we must make changes swiftly, which means that all of us must cooperate with the changes, rather than resist them.
How do we resist change?
We tend to retort to convert the same way we retort to whatever we realize as a threat: by flight or fight. Our first reaction is flight--we try to avoid convert if we can. We do what futurist Faith Popcorn calls "cocooning": we seal ourselves off from those nearby us and try to ignore what is happening. This can happen in the workplace just by being passive. We don't volunteer for teams or committees; we don't make suggestions, ask questions, or offer constructive criticism. But the changes ahead are inescapable. Those who "cocoon" themselves will be left behind.
Even worse is to fight, to actively resist change. Resistance tactics might contain negativity, destructive criticism, and even sabotage. If this seldom happens at your company, you are fortunate.
Take a dissimilar coming to change
Rejecting both alternatives of flight or flight, we seek a best option--one that neither avoids convert nor resists it, but harnesses and guides it.
Change can be the means to your goals, not a fence to them.
Both fight and flight are reactions to perceiving convert as a threat. But if we can convert our perceptions, we can avoid those reactions. An old proverb goes, "Every convert brings an opportunity." In other words, we must learn to see convert as a means of achieving our goals, not a fence preventing us from reaching them.
Another way of expressing the same idea is: A convert in my external circumstances provides me with an opening to grow as a human being. The greater the convert is, the greater and faster I can grow. If we can realize convert along these lines, we will find it spicy and energizing, rather than depressing and debilitating.
Yet this restructuring of our perspective on convert can take some time. In fact, coping with convert follows the same steps as the grieving process.1 The steps are shock and denial that the old habit must be left behind, then anger that convert is inevitable, then despair and a longing for the old ways, finally replaced by acceptance of the new and a brighter view of the future. Everybody works through this process; for some, the transition is lightning fast, for others painfully slow.
Realize your capacity to adapt.
As one writer put it recently:
Our foreparents lived through sea changes, upheavals so cataclysmic, so devastating we may never appreciate the fortitude and resilience required to survive them. The next time you feel resistant, think about them and about what they faced--and about what they fashioned from a fraction of the options we have. They blended old and new worlds, creating family, language, cuisine and new life-affirming rhythms, and they encouraged their children to keep on stepping toward an unknown but malleable future.2
Human beings are created remarkably flexible, capable of adapting to a wide collection of environments and situations. Realizing this can help you to embrace and guide convert rather than resisting or avoiding it.
Develop a coping strategy based on who you are.
Corporate employees typically supervene one of four decision-making styles: analytical, directive, conceptual, and behavioral. These four styles, described in a book by Alan J. Rowe and Richard O. Mason,3 have the following characteristics:
Analytical Style - technical, logical, careful, methodical, needs much data, likes order, enjoys problem-solving, enjoys structure, enjoys scientific study, and enjoys working alone.
Conceptual Style - creative and artistic, hereafter oriented, likes to brainstorm, wants independence, uses judgment, optimistic, uses ideas vs. Data, looks at the big picture, rebellious and opinionated, and committed to principles or a vision.
Behavioral Style - supportive of others, empathetic, wants affiliation, nurtures others, communicates easily, uses instinct, avoids stress, avoids conflict, relies on feelings instead of data, and enjoys team/group efforts.
Directive Style - aggressive, acts rapidly, takes charge, persuasive and/or is manipulative, uses rules, needs power/status, impatient, productive, single-minded, and enjoys private achievements.
Read once more through these descriptions and recognize which style best describes you. Then find and study the strategy population who share your style supervene to cope with change:
Analytical coping strategy - You see convert as a spicy puzzle to be solved. You need fullness of time to fetch information, analyze data, and draw conclusions. You will resist convert if you are not given sufficient time to think it through.
Conceptual coping strategy - You are interested in how convert fits into the big picture. You want to be complicated in defining what needs to convert and why. You will resist convert if you feel excluded from participating in the convert process.
Behavioral coping strategy - You want to know how Everybody feels about the changes ahead. You work best when you know that the whole group is supportive of each other and that Everybody champions the convert process. If the convert adversely affects person in the group, you will realize convert as a crisis.
Directive coping strategy - You want specifics on how the convert will affect you and what your own role will be during the convert process. If you know the rules of the convert process and the desired outcome, you will act rapidly and aggressively to perform convert goals. You resist convert if the rules or expected results are not clearly defined.
Realizing what our general decision-making style is, can enable us to establish personal change-coping tactics.
How can we cope with change?
Getting at least this much insight of the big picture will help us to understand where each of us fits.
2. Do some anchoring. - When everything nearby you is in a state of flux, it sure helps to find something stable that isn't going to change, no matter what. Your company's values (whether articulated or not) can supply that kind of stability for you. Ours contain the firm Family, Focus on the Customer, Be Committed to Quality, and allege Mutual Respect. These values are rock-solid; they are not going to disappear or rearrange themselves into something else. Plus, each of us has personal values that perhaps are even more critical and permanent. Such immovables can serve as anchors to help us ride out the storm.
3. Keep your expectations realistic. - A big part of taking control of the convert you touch is to set your expectations. You can still allege an optimistic outlook, but aim for what is realistically attainable. That way, the negatives that come along won't be so overwhelming, and the positives will be an adrenaline rush. Here are some examples:
Invest time and power in training. Edge your skills so that you can meet the challenges ahead with confidence. If the training you need is not ready through Bowne, get it somewhere else, such as the society college or adult study agenda in your area.
Get help when you need it. If you are confused or overwhelmed with the changes swirling nearby you, ask for help. Your supervisor, manager, or coworkers may be able to support you in adjusting to the changes taking place. Your human resources group and any company-provided counseling services are other resources ready to you.
Make sure the convert does not compromise either your firm values or your personal ones. If you are not careful, the technological advances jostling each other for your concentration and adoption will tend to cut off you from personal touch with your coworkers and customers. E-mail, teleconference, voice-mail, and Intranet can make us more in touch with each other, or they can keep us antiseptically detached, removed from an awareness that the digital signals we are sending reach and affect an additional one flesh-and-blood human being.
Aware of this tendency, we must actively counteract the drift in this direction by taking an interest in population and opening up ourselves to them in return. We have to remember to spend in people--all of those nearby us--not just in technology.
The "new normalcy"
Ultimately, we may seek that the current state of flux is permanent. After the events of September 11, Vice President Richard Cheney said we should accept the many resultant changes in daily life as permanent rather than temporary. "Think of them," he recommended, "as the 'new normalcy.'"
You should take the same coming to the changes happening at your workplace. These are not temporary adjustments until things get "back to normal." They are probably the "new normalcy" of your life as a company. The sooner you can accept that these changes are permanent, the best you can cope with them all--and enjoy their determined results.
Notes
1. Nancy J. Barger and Linda K. Kirby, The Challenge of convert in Organizations: Helping Employees Thrive in the New Frontier (Palo Alto, Ca: Davies-Black Publ., 1995). This source is summarized in Mary M. Witherspoon, "Coping with Change," Women in firm 52, 3 (May/June 2000): 22-25.
2. Susan Taylor, "Embracing Change," Essence (Feb. 2002): 5.
3. Alan J. Rowe and Richard O. Mason, Managing with Style: A Guide to Understanding, Assessing and improving Decision-Making (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass administration Series, 1987) cited in Witherspoon, "Coping with Change."
4. Emily Friedman, "Creature Comforts," condition Forum Journal 42, 3 (May/June 1999): 8-11. Futurist John Naisbitt has addressed this tendency in his book, High tech/high touch: Technology and our crusade for meaning (New York: Random House, 1999). Naisbitt co-wrote this book with his daughter Nana Naisbitt and Douglas Philips.
Coping with Change: produce Your Personal Strategy
