The Embracing of Change
Peter de Jager is a provocative Speaker, Writer and Consultant. His primary focus in on how we manage change, technology and the future.
In addition to speaking at conferences worldwide, he's also writen monthly columns for CIO Magazine and Computerworld Canada.
His goal is always to question what we think is so, and in so doing perhaps open up new opportunities.
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As I mentioned in the previous article, some 50 people responded to a tiny survey on Change. This continues the informal commentary on the data.
How do you feel when you're learning something new? I’ve done two unusual things here. I’ve run most (not all) of the responses into a stream of consciousness, and merely
bolded those which describe negative responses to learning. I’ve also highlighted two common themes.
Awesome -- I learn at least a couple of new things EVERY day. I love to learn. Challenged, uncertain, energized, overwhelmed. Usually I feel like I've conquered a fear and can move forward more. Excited - Excited and eager - Excited and invigorated. - Excited, alive to new possibilities, sometimes challenged. -Excited, puzzled, and enthused. Exhilarated, youthful, capable, and competent. Full of awe and wonder (hello, we are perennially six years old here!) I learn best from the experience of others, so I am particularly energized by small group conversations with my peers. Learning from books and in the classroom is rewarding, but less than learning from my peers. Great - it's an empowering feeling. - Great! I enjoy the challenge. I am excited, focused and eager to try it out. I enjoy learning new things when I have positive reinforcement. If learning is coupled with some failure, I need to be given positive support. I like to learn something new every day and share it with everyone I know. It makes me energized. It keeps me young I think. I love to learn new things. I can see where it can have an effect. If I am good at it, very satisfied and challenged. If not good at it, terrified and frustrated. If I want to learn it -- excited. If I'd rather not learn it, resentful. If I've chosen to do the learning, great - challenged, excited, buzzed, and then triumphant! I'm energized by it, I love it, I feel as though I am growing and stretching and expanding my world. Even the things I'm not happy about discovering (politics in a new office), I still find it interesting and something to add to my ever-growing bank of experiences and learning moments. Learning something new is invigorating - it’s like inhaling pure oxygen without all of the pollutants in the air. Every day I want to learn. Motivated and excited. I love the feeling that a "light bulb" went off in my head. Nervous, challenged, energized. Not confident, uneasy. Sometimes good, sometimes not. Stressed, out of control. Unsure, not so confident in myself, afraid of making a mistake, but also excited if it's something I want to learn. Usually excited and challenged, although occasionally a bit intimidated Way better than being dumb. It is engaging and I think a normal part of the changing process. When you are moving through life at a "normal" progression, you are learning and embracing the next step. When you take a step back, you have to ask yourself why you have to learn that step again. Wonderful, I love to learn new things and I actually seek out new challenges. I get bored if I am standing still intellectually.
Learning something new is a key component of any significant Change. Is it possible to still place any credence in the general statement, “People Resist Change” after reading this collection of responses? There are some negative aspects of learning, but the majority of the comments offer solutions to those concerns even as they’re being voiced. I’m willing to go out on a limb and summarize the responses as follows;
Learning something new,
Adds fuel and growth to our lives,
And while it’s sometimes scary,
It’s what makes life worth living.
I then asked the follow on question; If sometimes you see learning something new as a threat, and other times as a welcome challenge, to what do you attribute the difference? Once again, the data demands to be represented differently. So, here are the three primary categories.
Fear:
Again, fear of failure.
Fear -- like how can I implement it -- or can I make it work
From my experience, something "threatening" is usually based in F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real). It is the unknown concept that is not easy to grasp, therefore easier to push away, then contemplate and find a way to accept and integrate
I think it depends on how far out of my comfort zone it is and how great a risk.
Also, how tired I feel. If you feel run down by life, it's very difficult to embrace change.
I guess it's a self confidence thing
Lack of control, fear of failing.
Necessity:
Attitude. Buy-in, or the lack thereof.
…but sometimes I have to be convinced of the benefit before I embrace the new learning totally.
Choice as to whether or not to take on the learning.
I think for me it's about control. If I am in control, then I embrace it, if not, I tend to view it as a threat
I think something new can be perceived as a threat when it is misunderstood or the results of the new thing are largely unknown.
If I were to view this as a threat and a challenge, it would involve the way the situation was presented to me and my perception of what I might have to gain from learning something new.
Fearless:
Don't ever feel that way - I'm almost always open minded –
I always perceive it as a welcome challenge, I've found. Perhaps it's having a researcher's mindset, where it's all something to be explored.
I cannot think of an instance where acquiring new knowledge or a new skill is threatening.
I don't see learning anything new as a threat - I might not LIKE some of the self-awareness that I get, but it beats the alternatives...
I don't see learning as a threat.
I don't see learning new things as a threat.
I don't see learning something new as a threat.
Knowledge is a gift we should seek and share.
I rarely view learning something as a threat.
There is overlap in the concepts voiced here. Fear usually arises out of uncertainty, none of us know for certain whether we have the capability to acquire a new skill, usually we do, but at the start of learning there is no guarantee and we often fear the worst.
After reading the responses to the first set of questions, this should come as no surprise. Even though learning does energize and excite us, it also requires an investment of time and energy. We don’t usually choose to learn something which will serve no useful purpose.
The last group? They’re either naïve, heroic, insane or merely live in the world with rose coloured glasses super glued to their eye balls… but that’s okay because I’m a card carrying member of this category and have been, ever since I can remember. Learning is always good. The worst that can happen is that you don’t learn and even that is a learning experience. Learning can’t kill you, ignorance will surely do so.
The last two questions bring closure to this little exploration. The first is simply this;
Why is grief so incredibly painful at first?
This is by no means a simple question, and it’s certainly not a trivial one, but how does it fit into the topic of Change Management? What can an exploration of “Grief” teach us about “Change”? Well, that’s what this exploration is all about. Read through the responses and decide for yourself if they contain information, or possibly even wisdom, relating to how we react to significant Change.
Because it's a huge loss that we are not in control of.
Because something valuable has been lost.
Because the ideas you had for the future are altered.
Because we lose a part of ourselves when we lose a person (or position or opportunity) we have cared about.
Because you are losing something that means a lot to you. All you can think about is what you will be missing and how much that hurts.
Because your sense of loss overwhelms your knowledge and ability to cope.
I guess the depth of grief is caused by the place that person/thing held in our lives.
It's also an inability to hang out in the relentless inevitability of endings
Fear of the unknown. Regret over what may have been/what should have been.
From one day to the next a familiar pattern is disrupted, we have to cope with a tear or hole in the fabric of our life.
Grief is the immediate and intimate recognition of loss and change.
It hits hard at a life situation what you feel you cannot live without.
It's something we have lack of control over. Something very powerful causes huge emotions in us that we don't have any control over. We don't know how long it's going to last.
The loss of something dear. It's acknowledging the loss, and moving through the memories to a place of peace.
Loss, blame and anger hurt.
There is disbelief of what has occurred. You cannot imagine you life without that person/element in your life.
Sense of loss and helplessness. No control over the situation.
Unlike the other sets of responses, I’ve done a lot more filtering here and have deliberately chosen a sub-set of responses to illustrate a specific point. I’ll pay homage to the other responses at the end of this article.
Grief is our response to the largest change we can face in our lives, to an event we usually have zero control over, the death of a loved one. As such, “Grief” is our ultimate response to loss of control. Someone who loses a job via a layoff or other termination, who loses a business to a merger, or a bankruptcy, goes through a lesser form of grief. To determine if this rings true, pretend that the above responses were generated by this question, “Why is getting fired, so painful?” now ask yourself, are there are any responses significantly out of place?
If we compared the above responses to how we react to smaller and smaller changes they would become more and more inappropriate. One does not (I hope) grieve for the passing of the last version of MS-Word as we would grieve for the loss of a child. That said, I have met people who have become unnaturally attached to the strangest things.
Grief is the ultimate response
to the greatest loss.
All Change is about loss,
All Change causes some Grief
The last question addressed the permanency of Grief; Why does the pain of grief go away? Once again, I’m going to filter these responses heavily and address the ones I left out at the end of the article.
As we get removed farther and farther from the wound that caused the grief, it begins to heal.
Because we accept that "it is what it is" over time. Life - and we - move on;
Because we learn to cope.
Because we adapt to change, even if we don't want to.
You just learn how to cope with it.
As the new pattern is established, the physical pain of loss is diminished.
I don't know that it goes away, it just gets replaced by new experiences, the passing of time.
I don't think it goes away entirely. It lessens over time as we accept a "new reality"
In time your memories are not as strong and you learn to live without.
It doesn't, it merely gets alleviated by new experiences.
It just takes time. We get used to living without the other person. Life does go on.
It never really does, we just learn to live with it
Life has a way of filling in the gaps, when something important is lost.
One adjusts, as a human being. For some something else comes to take it's place.
Other things fill the cognitive space, one finds comforts or perspective.
Over time, acceptance and the process of healing takes place.
The new reality becomes owned.
Over time, it is accompanied by or replaced by other feelings.
There's finally some level of acceptance that you have to move beyond grief.
The novelty of the loss goes away and you get used to it.
The pain doesn't go away; we're changed by it, and it becomes a part of who we are.
If I chose to dwell on a particular situation, I can relive the same level of grief as when it first occurred.
Time and the fact that we work through it in our mind.
Many folks just get stuck in that process and can't get out.
Time heals, we grow more comfortable in our situation, other emotions replace the grief
I think it's human nature to forget.
We also re-learn or adapt to the change around us and seek new people or resources to fill the void left behind.
You learn to live with the way things are.
Not much needs to be said about these comments, they speak loudly for themselves. We can adapt to almost anything. If that’s true, and it is for the vast majority of us, then adapting to other changes in our lives is almost, but not quite, a trivial exercise. I highlighted only one comment as a reminder… we can wrap ourselves around Grief, and all its minor variations, to the point where we continually renew the anguish and anger. Letting go of what we cannot change is good and healthy advice.
Summary:
The results strongly suggest that our resistance to Change stems not from an inherent aversion to learning new things, but from a desire to protect our Status Quo from unnecessary Change. The more the decision to Change is our idea, or the more we understand why the Change is necessary, the more we’re willing to embrace the pain of transition.
In those cases where we’re not a part of that decision process, where we’re forced to Change against our will, we’ll resist as best we can. If that resistance fails, if we can’t seize control of the situation in some manner, then we will go through a form of grief.
§
As promised, I want to summarize the responses I left out of the last two sets of commentary. I wrote the next little essay a few years ago… I can’t think of a better way to summarize what I chose to exclude.
Truth Pick #088
Joy shared is joy increased,
grief shared is grief diminished.
Rabbi Earl GrollmanGrief is a hole inside us, filled with echoes of the past. We react to it in different ways. For some, quiet reflection is what heals us, for others, a drawing closer is the soothing balm.
Grief is a common bond. Not riches or poverty, religion or place of birth are sufficient to make our experiences significantly different. In dreadful personal loss, we find we share a simple humanity.
Our tears all taste of salt.
That we can finally recognize this connection, is the one true gift of grief. Life is strangely fair, in losing one thing, we always gain another. When we both lose a loved one, we also gain a rare common understanding.
We're never alone, not even when we're lost.
Like many human rites of passage, grief is becoming a topic we'd rather not explore. There's no room for grief in the ledger, no place for it in the boardroom... until we encounter it ourselves.
We can try to hide it inside, but grief is not to be denied. When it arises, it comes with a simple inescapable message. I'm a person too... just like you.
(c) 2005, Peter de Jager – Guess what? Peter has a passionate, almost
obsessive, fascination with this thing called Change. Especially the
change brought about by technology. If you’d like to inject some of his passion
and focus to your organization’s change management process… then contact him at
Pdejager@technobility.com
Here’s what a recent client had to say about his work;
His presentation was a prelude to a one day seminar titled "Change Management, the Missing Component". At this event, attended by 28 professionals, Peter demonstrated the key points in the process of managing change and dealing with resistance. The seminar was run in an innovative way; exchanging the conventional presentation for a highly interactive learning experience. I personally found it an incredible and memorable experience.
Gordon Bartlett, PMP
President
Sydney Chapter, NSW Australia, PMI
May 2005
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