On April 11, I had the pleasure of speaking at the IABC Strategic Corporate Communications Leadership Summit in D.C. To introduce my topic of “Communicating Organizational Change,” I asked participants to complete a simple sentence:
Change is…
The potential responses were:
A. Hard
B. Pretty
C. Pretty Darn Hard
D. A Bit#h!
E. Easy
It may have been the audience of battle-tested communicators, but the responses were 99% D, and no Es.
What does that say about our view of change?
But what if we were to shift our mindset and instead of saying change is a Bit#h, we were to say change is “natural?” As natural as a caterpillar turning into a butterfly or the change of the seasons that cause the cherry blossoms to bloom each year.
We all change and make transitions – from teenager to young adult, from being single to perhaps getting married, to becoming a parent, to losing a parent, etc. Each of these transitions is natural, organic–part of the human condition. The point is that we do change. But we change and adapt at our pace. For some it may take months to make the transition; for others it may take years.
As we think about change and begin to shift our mindset to one in which change is natural, what does change look and feel like to you? To your organization?
