Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Change Management...for the Love of God

I may be about to alienate my HR friends…but here goes. 

I’m tired of hearing about change management tools, approaches, messages, and models. Are employees incapable of adjusting to changes in the workplace with out an inservice, lunch-and-learn session, or a team of life counselors to help them through it all?

Oh, please.

How about this:

“You’re a grown up…things have been changing since forever…let’s all act like adults, support each other and press on."

Easy Now…People Are More Sensitive Today
Alas, before I forget that the planet has done a nosedive into the comfortable world of politically correct mediocrity, let me take a step back.

Big changes require good messaging. Let’s say your organization is faced with a layoff (twitter). Clear, concise and honest messaging goes a long way. And for the record, in Jack's message to the employees, he didn’t discuss a series of change management educational sessions (think work-speak as therapy) to help everyone get through it all.

Easy Now…You’re Not Supporting the Profession
I love human resources. I’ve spent my entire career trying to lead effectively as a human resources professional, and candidly I don’t see any other executive roles that integrate the people side of the business more than HR.

But sometimes we get caught up in our own “stuff” and we end up looking…well…silly in front of our colleagues at the table. (Yes, we’re at the table…for those of you that don’t think we are you haven’t been paying attention.)

How About You
When big issues hit your organization you better have a well thought out communication plan for the team. But please, let’s not get so caught up in our HR work that we forget that we are not the business. We support the business.

Once we have that level of awareness, we can make all the difference in the world.

I’d love to hear from you.

No Excuses.

No comments:

Post a Comment