Tuesday, June 6, 2017

The Psychological Insight of Change Management

If you have a good change strategy in place, gain the psychological insight of change management, with adaptability to change, you can ride above the change curve.


Change is inevitable, people are the very reason to change and the center of change. People are often the weakest link in any change management effort as well. There is the strategic understanding of change management, technique know-how of change management, and here is the psychological insight about change management.

There are different psychological responses to changes: There are full emotion cycles behind changes, and it is the mixed bag of positive emotions (There is so much psychology in openness to new ideas and perspectives) and negative emotions (resistance to change, fear, etc.) There is no one size fits all approach to addressing the different psychological responses and thereby reducing anxiety because there are different psychological perspectives. To accurately interpret those psychological responses to changes depends on various business actors like the business maturity, forethought, and attitude of the individual and much more. And how to manage the emotion cycle behind changes is both art and science. The perspective that 'people resist change' has reasons. It is entirely possible that the resistance is symptomatic of a number of deeper causes, one of which is that the change has not been properly defined, aligned or considered in respect to potential undesirable effects. More often, the psychology behind the change is that “People likes to change, but do not want to be changed” and there is the difference. So change leaders should take a multidisciplinary change management approach via both “soft touch” to connect the minds and hearts and “hard processes” to make change happen in a structural way.

Business leaders/managers must first examine their own mindset: This may include but not be limited to their mindset about how easy or difficult the change will be to complete. Mindset is a very broad term, and people are complicated, probably the most complicated 'thing' on the planet. But it doesn't mean we can't change to improve who we are and what we're doing. The change mindset with positive mentalities include growth mindset (thinking change as the opportunity), problem-solving mindset (fixing the real problem, not just symptom), creative mindset (discovering an alternative way to do thing), strategic mind (keep the end in mind, think long-term), multi-intelligent mindset (show the humility to learn and catch up) etc. The fixed or rigid mind is a type of “anti-change” mindset, it usually won’t allow the person to think beyond a point. These mindsets can be described as defensive and resist or reject anything that affects cozy familiarity. Real change is deprogramming old mindsets, letting go of "the voices from the past," reprogramming people's minds with new values, norms, and attitudes; establishing a new blueprint for how you want to create the digital future reality. Mindset is everything, a ‘changeable mindset’ is a success factor for any change management effort, a prerequisite to building a culture of innovation and a trait in any high-performance businesses.

Creativity today asks for a new mindset:  Not every change is innovation, but innovation is the most wanted changes. If you have to addictive to something, addict to creativity. Creativity is an innate mental process to create naval ideas, and then innovation helps to transform them and achieve the business value. At Individual level, human beings are not only 'reasonable' but they have imagination: All happens through imagination and change is living, there cannot be any change without imagination. At the organizational level, creativity is incredibly useful, both in terms of making an impact with change management communications and tactics. Because these days it is pretty tough to get attention as there is so much going on, but also in terms of strategies and solutions. Being creative helps in finding new solutions, in working differently and building a new world. It is a task for visionary or entrepreneur-minded leaders to convey the vision and make change happens and sustain it via a multidisciplinary approach.

Change is good and we must embrace and adapt to it because with change comes new innovations. If you have a good change strategy in place, gain the psychological insight of change management, with adaptability to change, you can ride above the change curve. The goal of change and improvement should look beyond immediate problem resolution. The focus should include actions designed to sustain performance improvement and anchor change as a new opportunity.


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