LOUISE GILBERT
Founder & Director
Leadership Isn’t Just a Role; It’s a Responsibility to Create Change
Why so much about change has changed, and when change management died.
The irony is not lost on me when I say the way we think about and manage change in organisations has fundamentally changed! Change management of old is dead, and for many it is one of the broken basics in our organisations.
When I was involved in change management years ago leaders and organisational change experts talked about change management as if it was a magic paint, we applied to the change initiative along with a linear change process to “make the change.” That was ok when it happened infrequently, and we could almost delegate to a change expert or consultant to do these one-offs.
Today our work lives, our organisations, our people, and leaders are in the business of change every single day, and the process is not happening occasionally for a one-off big initiative as we are working in a world of constant and significant change.
How we manage change in our work is a responsibility for us all, and having the skills or tools to do this without the associated stress and anxiety that often accompanies change is critical. As burnout rates keep climbing, and a world of uncertainty is taking a toll on our wellbeing.
At an individual, team and organisational level change is needing to occur quicker and with greater efficiency than ever before. The pressure is always on for us to move forward, act, find solutions, solutions, solutions!
Our desire to maintain control in amongst changing times and managing more complexity is seeing leaders taking away the autonomy of their workforce, mandating WFH days or WFO days, and the subsequent trust gap is widening. Many organisations are losing good people, struggling to retain their talent and experiencing high attrition rates.
This is all happening at the same time we are losing our ability to maintain our attention span, to sit in the discomfort, and practice active reflection. Are we learning from all this change, and new experiences? If we don’t make the space, we can’t.
I explore these issues in my book, Make Work Work for You (on page 74), and how important is practice active reflection for our growth. And of course, with growth comes our ability to sustain wellbeing (even during uncertainty and change) and better performance.
“Active reflection is a deliberate and purposeful process of examining our experiences, thoughts and actions to gain insights, make meaning, and facilitate learning and growth.”
Contemporary methods and practices are necessary, as leadership is now always in the business of creating change, and successful leaders are ‘upping’ their game daily.
