Ready for Change?
An Article by Deb

On your mark, get set, ready... Go! These are the directives that we have heard for years in our quest to win. There are many individuals and organizations that are so intent on making changes so they can get ahead in the game yet in their quest to win, they lose sight of planning and readiness for change and often make preventable false starts. The major disadvantage these people have when false starts take place is they don't have an official or referee shooting off a gun or blowing a whistle to get their attention to stop, evaluate, and restart - they essentially, have no check and measurement. Instead, these folks keep running toward a goal in a way that will unknowingly contaminate their outcome. Change efforts are typically pursued to either stabilize a situation, progress a situation, or just to simply survive. Whatever the reason, there is usually a lot at stake. Being that so much is likely to be riding on this change, it is important to assess your state of readiness for this change and define a pace that will help to manage the initiative for favorable outcomes. Whether you are a sales professional, guiding prospects through a process, or a leader, it often comes down to managing the change as it relates to human capital.

Equate this with a bunch of bananas. Really. Let's say an organizational leader picked a bunch of green bananas from a tree. Let's say this very same leader picked the bunch because s/he was simply hungry. In looking at the bananas s/he realized that they were green. S/he was ready but they were not. She could proceed but the bananas wouldn't taste as good as if they would if s/he waited, and more importantly, they wouldn't offer this leader the energy s/he needed.

When my daughter was four years old she asked me why bananas always wear jackets. Sarah expressed herself as though she had complete confidence that I would have an answer for her. Together, we examined the banana peeled. It was yellow, thick skinned, picked off a tree, and bruised. Unpeeled, the banana was white, soft, sweet, and bruised, but the bruise was much smaller than what the skin had indicated. We asked some 'what' questions. Deb's addendum: bananas are delicate and need to be handled with care to provide it an opportunity to reach optimal state as a source of energy.

Let's say senior management of an organization has been meeting for months regarding reengineering efforts. Their discussions have led them to the point of action. They have a company communications meeting to tell everyone that there will be some major changes occurring shortly. The presentation at the meeting may go something like this: "We on the management team have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. We have been redesigning the way we will do business in the future. In this redesign, many of you will be finding yourselves doing different things. We are convinced that this is something we need to do. You don't need to know anymore than what we have already told you. We'll inform you of the specifics within the next week. We anticipate the changes to be in place within the next 30 days.

Continuing with the metaphor, think about a bunch of bananas as an organization's staff. Senior management knocks the bananas off their branch and the bananas are green. The skin is really thick and hard. Not much of its environment will get through. Correlate this tough skin to the attitudes of employees when they are knocked off their foundation and are told they need to participate in change. Well, just as we wait for the bananas to turn yellow before we take action and eat it, the management must wait for the employees to be ready for change. Instead, many organizational leaders are charging them to change, to "just do it", and to do things differently with minimum awareness and understanding of the big picture. Not to mention the lack of assessing the current competencies to make the change happen successfully. The news is no matter how much we tell a banana to turn yellow; it will only turn when it is ready. They can only be a source of energy when they are ready.

Organizations need to find a better way to foster the attitudes of readiness before they can rightfully expect the employees to enthusiastically act and participate in change.

Promoting your organization to this level will likely take a full human capital assessment of skills and knowledge necessary to adapt to the change. It will take training; supportive organizational systems, and then some.

Adapted from James Prochaska

Leaders need to communicate to the employees while they are still 'safely' attached to their comfort zone. This makes a difference and enables the group to listen. They are most vulnerable at the point of pre-contemplation and contemplation. So the leaders need to recognize that although they themselves are ready for action, they may need to exercise patience, (a true virtue of any great leader). People need to be introduced to new ideas at a pace that is comfortable and non-threatening. If an organization communicates clearly and patiently, they are improving the environment for the employees' readiness for change to ripen. Leadership needs to foster an environment that will promote readiness. Lack of doing this often leads to retention issues.

At the action stage, when people are ready to approach the change, it behooves the organization to be responsive to this crucial turning point. If leadership action is delayed without communicating to personnel the what, when, and why to generate awareness & understanding, the ready to act mindset in this group can easily and quickly decrease and deflate. You know what happens to a banana when it isn't accessed at its ready state... it rots; it turns on you; it may even find itself in an oven being baked into bread. It changes its form, yet it had more energy for you in its fresh ripe state. The skin can only maintain the state of readiness for so long. Being ready for change is an exciting accomplishment that takes time to reach. The stages of change occur for all of us, individually and organizationally.

This article is simply answering in part the question "Why do people and/ or organizations resist change". As illustrated in the banana metaphor, the very nature of the world and of humans is to change at a pace that is right. Resistance is due to the pre-maturity of leaders expecting action from the rest of the organization. If leaders take the time to understand where people's resistance is coming from and they account for that when they introduce the change, they can help the rest of the organization adjust and understand the focus of the new direction. It is almost like creating a green house environment to promote readiness and ripeness. Working with a leadership coach and with an objective facilitator can help to generate this environment and confident sense of readiness.

When the stages of readiness are honored and attended to, individuals and organizations will find themselves soaring further beyond than ever before. Being ready for change as an organization is an all-inclusive team of people on the starting block that are ready to take the action as a complete unit. Now you're ready. Now you are set. Now you can GO!