Understanding People, an Important Principle in your Leadership Journey

We live in a VUCA world. In today’s turbulent business environment, organizations must respond to constant change. The combination of external forces can be described as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). In order to grow and thrive, organizations, and the people in them, need to learn how to adapt and respond to change, rather than just react to current challenges. But the resources and training that would really help are often not available. The burden of change typically falls to employees, whose jobs are reorganized, work processes redesigned and collegial relationships disrupted. This can lead to stress and disorientation. Too often, the organization assumes that employees will simply cope, but constant change can lead to “change fatigue” and innovation and creativity suffer as a result (Skjei, 2018).

Inner vs External Changes

In most organizations “change management” (the responsibility of helping organizations through change) falls to front-line leaders, human resources and change managers. Change management is intended to move the organization from the current state to the desired future state, so the expected benefits of the change can hopefully be realized. However, it typically focuses on the external changes that need to happen, such as job redesign…