Turbulent Times? Getting Your People to Change Just Got a Whole Lot Harder
White Paper – Janice Darling, MBA, BSEE
Contrary to conventional wisdom, implementing workplace change initiatives in a turbulent environment is more complex and difficult than doing so in a predictable economy. Leaders who achieve results today are looking at change in a dramatically different way. With a slumping job market, many leaders believe they can easily push changes through without engaging or motivating their employees. Unfortunately, assuming that fear of losing jobs is enough to propel workplace change initiatives to success will result in abysmal failure for the leader.
The leaders’ dilemma is to figure out how to step into a very different role to address these challenges while struggling with their own resource constraints and external pressures to move faster.
Challenge #1. Your employees are afraid of losing their jobs When the world is seen as unstable and unsafe, your employees and managers will be nodding in agreement with every suggestion you make. They are afraid to talk about problems, concerns, or questions. While you will want to believe that everyone is on-board and ready to go with these workplace change initiatives, the implications of people not bringing you bad news because they are afraid of losing their jobs are:
- Managers are unwilling to make decisions and will continue to ask for more information, form committees to discuss, and stall until the leader intervenes.
- Problems surface too late. Leaders find out too late that employees are not trained sufficiently, no transition time or plans are developed for people to move into new roles, communications are confusing or nonexistent, and/or the solution won’t work for customers.
