Understanding Change – How to Make Change a Positive Experience

Change can be a difficult thing to understand. Whether it’s in the workplace or in our personal lives, changes are constantly occurring. Understanding these changes can help us be more proactive and create a better life for ourselves. Our articles here have some great tips to help you get on track with your change management strategies and learn how to make change a positive experience.

One of the main reasons why it’s so hard to understand change is because it occurs on so many different levels. For example, there’s cultural change, organisational change, individual change and even biological change. Moreover, these changes can take place at the same time and often interact with each other.

The way that we view and respond to change differs from person to person, however, most people can be classified as either a proponent or an opponent of change. Proponents of change are those who actively seek it out whereas opponents of change see themselves as the recipients of change and feel they must resist it. Despite the differences in perceptions, both perspectives have valid arguments.

Understanding how change affects individuals can help managers plan and manage organisational change effectively. For example, employees who have a negative view of organisational change may be less inclined to buy into the project. Understanding how to overcome these negative reactions will ensure that employees are supportive of the change and will help it to progress smoothly.

If you want your team to buy into a change, start by getting them on board early. This can be done through a kickoff meeting or by ensuring that all the employees who are going to be impacted by the change are fully informed from the beginning. This will allow them to prepare for the change and will ensure that they are comfortable with the new system or process.

Another way to understand change is through Edgar Schein’s three elements of culture, which include the artefacts that make up a culture, the values and beliefs that form it and its basic assumptions. These elements can be used to analyse and evaluate culture during a change initiative, allowing the manager to develop strategies for overcoming resistance to change.

Psychologists like James Prochaska and Carlo Di Clemente have developed a model for how individuals adjust to change. The model suggests that people go through five stages of change, which are based on the Kubler-Ross model of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The model allows you to identify where you or a loved one are in the process of change and slowly work to move them through the stages. understanding change