Good at Change Management? So What?
The following are talking points from a speech from an HR Executive delivered to the workforce in a soon-to-be-acquired organization:
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Our merger will demand more than change management.
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It’s not change that will trip us up . . . it’s uncertainty. It's harder to deal with uncertainty than adapt to change. People can be amazingly resilient once they have closure. But until then, uncertainty can be distracting, gut-wrenching, and damaging to productivity.
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There is no escaping uncertainty. It is everywhere you look. On all fronts, it’s an uncertain world.
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To add to the problem, our brains are simply not built to handle uncertainty. They’re built to complete and achieve closure. Just think of the number of times you’ve sat through a movie that you didn’t really enjoy just to make sure you knew how it ended. Or how compelled people are to complete crossword puzzles, where the reward is simply finishing something. Or perhaps even when you’ve made a decision that might not have been the best decision, just to end the pain of indecision. Our brains are fantastic at resolving . . . but easily stressed by uncertainty.
- To get better at managing uncertainty, we must...
