Change Is Hard — Which Is Why We Need to Find Better Ways to Solve Problems

Crisis is when the future is viewed as being in flux, causing people to feel they don’t understand where the future is headed. In a crisis, someone will lead everyone to a change.

Change management is reaction to crisis. Famously, the French revolution led to the Napoleonic Codes. Americans are especially prone to crisis change management. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, for instance, Americans rapidly embraced change that promoted science and technology when it appeared that America was falling behind in the space race.

Another way to effect change is by benchmarking across other organizations. Remote work was a challenge for many organizations during the recent pandemic. Yet, during and after it, many organizations noted how the demand for talent had changed and how talent is not always physically located where the demand exists.

Encouraging the remote market was one solution to demand problems both in government and industry and, for guidance, many organizations looked to existing industry standards for remote work, such as GitLab. By creating a vision of how remote work would occur in an operational manner, government stakeholders could see how change occurred, and how it improved the talent pool.

We can’t always plan for change when a crisis occurs. A crisis acts a motivator, and we look for ways to promote the change forward. For example, in marketing a new technology, there are five groups of potential users to consider: the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. To get change going, government employees need to engage the innovators first. While they are a small group in any organization, or they might be outside users, their influence is in creating the competing vision.

Another way to drive change is for an organization to link innovators together. In financial services, the Federal Reserve set up a dedicated hub to encourage innovation. This resource is where people can learn about best practices for change. In one area, a report called “Community Bank Access to Innovation Through Partnerships” specifically uses the marketing concept of linking innovators. By using examples where community banks use customer-oriented partnerships, those with innovative solutions can partner with community banks to develop solutions for their customers. The bank is the one introducing the innovation to the marketplace, while the fintech partner developed the actual solution. The Federal Reserve created a marketplace for innovation driving change across an entire sector.

By encouraging innovators to confront a problem before a crisis, people act to overcome resistance to change. During the pandemic many had to change a process. But change does not need only come when a crisis happens. There are other ways to promote and guide it.

The reason to promote change in a sustainable way is because change that happens during a crisis often is considered temporary. The goal is not improvement, but returning to what was. Yet today, as change happens in many unexpected directions, it is a key for people to create a culture of stable change.

Christopher Rabzak is the founder of CRXJEM Consulting LLC, a management consulting firm that focuses on technology companies.  Chris received his Aerospace Engineering degree from Penn State University, and worked in private industry for Teledyne Ryan and Boeing, as well as government entities including NASA.  Chris earned an MBA and a JD from Widener University.  He founded CRXJEM in 2008, and works with tech firms, develops continuing legal education courses to help attorneys understand how technology works, and is a certified continuing legal education provider in Pennsylvania. He is currently forming an international advisory board for a growing tech company.

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Northeast Region’s Flickr Photostream