The invisible impact of change & transformation
When you start looking at how the forces of psychology of change play out, at individual & team level and at organizational scale, you start seeing a different picture than when you look at the rational mechanics at surface level.
You may have encountered cases where managers do not engage in change programs, because they do not have time for it. Or employees that do not carry forward a new business initiative because they do not have the right tools. Maybe there are conflicts and disagreement because of “strong personalities”, or usual dichotomies between functions. This is what is visible, at the surface level. The symptoms do not always make rational sense, and we explain them with incompetency, or politics, or lack of caring.
Change impacts us all at a deeper level as well. Fear of becoming irrelevant, not being capable to do ones job, identity change, or just simply worry about the unknown. When it happens, defenses kicks in. We may project all kind of things on each other, on the leaders or the organization itself. This is normal. It is how we react to change as human beings. Looking at what is going on under the surface, things start to make sense, we can see cause and effect, and do something about it.
If we acknowledge and embrace that we are humans, and start paying attention to the Human Experience at work, new levers to pull will unfold in front of our eyes to achieve the business results we set out to reach.
Paying attention to the Human Experience allows you to see the organisation and business in a different way. And it will radically transform how you lead and manage change.
Dealing with invisible forces in practice
The work we lead with clients on the Human Experience is about understanding the emotional reactions, group dynamics, behavior, subtle and non-communication and other invisible forces at work. The outcome is that individuals and teams can make sense of the often-complex situation they are in, take charge of their challenges at hand, act, and engage others. It allows you to get over or around the invisible obstacles (defenses, illusions, denial, blind spots, etc) that we find in organizations, and then proactively design a Human Experience that is conducive to high performance and growth.
One fundamental way to understand the Human Experience is through the BART framework: Boundaries, Authority, Roles and Task. As human beings, we have a relation with these elements since birth, and each organisation is has it’s own relationship to is as well. And during change, it is all shaken up. A complementary framework is gaining ground to understand the human experience, is NIPI: Network, Influence, Power, and Identity, which gives us insights in how to navigate change towards new organizational and societal models.
Another key dimension of the human experience relative to change is how we understand being in transition, and what happens to un in the time-space between the old and the new ways of working. That place can be confusing, frustrating, and scary. And it is also where new ideas, insights and ways forward are born. How we manage this time and space makes all the difference.
Risks
It does not matter how good the business results are, how much money the company makes or how great products and patents you may be sitting on are. If the Human Experience is poor, it leads to burn-out, metal health issues, disengagement, talent acquisition challenges and performance issues, and over time the business performance deteriorates.
Benefits
Paying attention to the Human Experience, understanding it and curating it is bringing immediate benefits of energy and increased productivity, and long term it helps building a high performance, sustainable and resilient organisation.
How we help
We design and lead clients through Hybrid Experiences. We connect the Human Experience with the Business Experience. The result is that employees are set up to do their work in a way that is meaningful, engaging, inspirational and that has relevant and adequate impact.
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