Ouch! Does change have to hurt?

January 20, 2012
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Have you found yourself dealing with the fallout of change?change 'ouch'

It’s one of the hardest parts of leadership…recognising the need to change and taking the necessary actions and then dealing with the fallout – the shock, denial, anger, and fear that often follow a big change announcement. It’s time consuming and frustrating and can leave leaders scratching their heads and management teams wondering ‘is it really worth it?’

When change involves a perceived loss for employees, I like to draw from the lessons of organisational fairness to help strengthen feelings of trust and justice during change.  “When workers see themselves as being treated fairly, they develop attitudes and behaviours required for successful change.”*

Fair doesn’t mean equal

Change creates winners and losers.  It’s inevitable.  But it is possible for employees to support a change, even when they perceive it as a loss.  This is when your change team needs to be focussed on the principles of organisational fairness:

  1. Commit to consistency between what you say and what you do
  2. Remind people of the common ground – the goals that are shared between parties, even when the change has resulted in inequity to some
  3. Don’t overstate the positive – communication should be honest, frequent and consistent to assure employees that they will never be intentionally deceived
  4. Encourage participation (organisational citizenship) – make people aware of how they can participate in positive ways. 

But who enforces fairness?

Implementing a change is time consuming and tiring and worrying about fairness usually takes a back seat.   While your project teams are focussed on delivery and deadlines.  Your change team should be focussed on people – they are on the ground and close to those most impacted employees…watching, listening, and feeding back meaningful information that is also consistent.

And this doesn’t mean delegating to a junior communications person.  Enforcing justice sometimes requires some pretty tough conversations with senior managers.  You need someone who can stand up for the principles when they are being overlooked. 

Is it working? 

An ex-boss of mine used to ask ‘is the line going up or going down’?    He was frustrated with waiting for facts and figures to prove if a communication strategy was working.  Over the years, I have learned that the best yardstick for ‘is it working’  isn’t complex statistics or a surveys,  but conversations.  Bring up the change in a small group of impacted employees and just observe what happens. 

  • Do they know the facts? 
  • Can they explain it to each other? 
  • Can they talk about it reasonably, without spiralling out of control? 

When the principles of fairness and justice are at work in an organisation, you can observe them in the employee interactions.  That is the best ‘proof’ I know. 

*Folger, R. and Starlicki, D.P. (1999).  “Unfairness and resistance to change:  hardship as mistreatment”,   Journal of Organisational Change Management, 12(1), 1999, pp. 35-50.

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