Liz Weber is my business colleague, a friend, and has previously written a guest post on this blog (Unable to delegate effectively? You may be the reason). She also pens her own blog and this recent post about change management – When you raise the bar, your team will trip over it – caught my attention.
In this article, she talks about how when trying to implement change in organizations, things get messy before they get organized! In other words, things feel a lot worse before they finally get better. This makes sense because any sort of change shakes things up, and this makes people feel uncomfortable. But discomfort is actually a good thing because it means that people are doing something differently than they did before. So when you “raise the bar”, it’s okay for team members to trip and fall and even get a few bumps and bruises, it’s part of the process of moving forward.
So take a quick read through Liz’s post and then come on back here and share your experiences. What has been your encounter with the discomfort associated with change – either what you’ve seen or what you’ve experienced yourself? Was it good or bad?