Dealing with change: How to maximize people’s differing needs

For most people, accepting change itself isn’t nearly as difficult as dealing with the speed of change. There are those who actually seek out and thrive on the new: the early adopters. Then, there are those who need to go slower, take care, bring others along. Working in, especially running, an organization, the challenge is getting the changes to work for everyone, near the same time if possible. Of course, knowing what to change, and why, and how to communicate and manage the changes themselves are equally important. To many this seems more art than science, but the truth is that science can guide the art.

Managing stress: Most people only do half the job–and here’s the other half ...

In the history of stress management ... relaxation tools were the focus in helping people in business. Companies hired experts in visualization, meditation, yoga, breathing exercises, self-hypnosis and more to help people relax at work when they needed to. This made perfect sense, and still does, with an important caveat. Relaxation and relief are necessary and wonderful for us. But what if we’re in the midst of putting out multiple fires at work? In that case, we can’t do any of those things ... Besides, in that case relaxation isn’t the answer anyway. When we’re in the middle of tough challenges, chaos, confusion and high stress we really need to be at our very best, not necessarily our most relaxed. This is when we need to perform at our highest level, like an athlete finding another gear when they’re losing so they can pull out a win. It’s sometimes said that winners are at their best when things are at their worst. 

The current VUCA state: This one is worse–here’s how to prepare

A sign someone posted on social media:

So, now we’re practicing.  But how do we do this for our work and our organizations? What do we practice, and how do we prepare for the ... future ...? We know, no one really knows for sure because we’re in a VUCA state (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) right now. Preparation at times like this means understanding what we can, and being flexible so we can respond to what we can’t. It’s a time of change.