Team Change

As change facilitators and leaders, most of us have seen that it’s helpful to have a change plan, and to follow some kind of framework or change model that reminds us of the essentials that will help us to guide the organisation through the change we’re helping to deliver.

And I know from my own experience, and from discussions with my colleagues, that the framework, no matter which one or how diligently followed, is not a guarantee of successful change. 

This series of articles is best read in order, so if you haven’t read article 1, article 2.1 or article 2.2 yet, I invite you to head over and do that first.

In part 1 we covered what resistance to change is, what it’s really telling us, and where the most leverage is in terms of intervention.

In part 2 we will look at how an intervention based on the understanding of how the mind works can make a difference – we’ll explore the implications of really understanding what I’m pointing to here.

The practical implications of understanding

In my previous article about creating change-ready teams, I wrote about the understanding of the state of mind that is the key to preparing your people for change.  If you haven’t read that one yet, you might like to go and read it first – it lays the foundation for the rest of this series.

It’s a well-worn phrase from Heraclitus:

“Everything changes and nothing stands still”

or otherwise translated: the only constant is change.

If that’s the case, change should be no surprise to anyone.  It’s an everyday, ordinary thing – one could go so far as to say it’s the nature of life - so why do so many teams (and entire organisations) struggle to implement change smoothly?