By Liz Fuscaldo
To say our world has experienced one of the most unprecedented changes in recent history would be an understatement. Just over a year ago, the global COVID-19 pandemic upended and forever altered how we will go about our lives. From business, to education, technology, policy, security, healthcare, and even elections – COVID has disrupted it in some way.
While the pandemic didn’t give us a choice in how the changes impacted us, national security leaders do have a choice in how to manage organizational change. Traditional change management approaches often rely on a simple concept: if you educate people, they will go along with the change. Seems logical, right? Yet people’s behavior consistently contradicts this theory. But why?
Change elicits an emotional response as it seeks to alter engrained behaviors; trying to change them pushes us out of our routine or comfort zone. And when our routine faces disruption, or we’re made to feel uncomfortable – we resist because we are human. That’s why to successfully manage change, it’s crucial for leaders to have a people-centric change approach, such that change isn’t happening to your people, but rather with your people.
So how exactly do you do this?
As businesses, schools, and the world reopen, leaders have an opportunity in front of them. How will you permanently adapt to and manage not only to our “new normal” but any future change in front of them? Include your people. Don’t just educate them, but listen to them, involve them, and allow them to be co-creators in your new organizational future.