How to manage a climate of change

Winston Churchill said that “to improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often”. Mary Shelley said “nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change”. And Tolstoy said that “everyone thinks of changing the world, but no-one thinks of changing himself”.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Change is constant in our teams, organisations, funding, policies and systems. Leaders in NHS England, on the front line in healthcare providers and in integrated care systems are holding questions about what their roles and their resourcing will be in the next three, six and 12 months. They are looking at the future with emotions ranging from hope and excitement, through to pain and anxiety.

So what can we do to help ourselves and the teams we lead to work through the impact of this? I want to suggest three things:

1. Recognise that everyone has different tolerances for change

In fact, it would be weird if we all approached and experienced change the same way. Our workplaces are made up of the beautiful uniqueness of the people who form our teams. So change (be it restructure, new systems, new ways of working together) impacts people in uniquely different ways. It is not as simple as “this person loves change, that person hates change”.

Normalise divergent experiences of change. Allow people to talk about how they are experiencing it, be it positive or negative. Your team is made up of many different narratives, giving them space to breathe is both cathartic and trust building. This step serves to increase levels of psychological safety, even in the turbulence.

2. Let people have skin in the game

Research tells us that understanding a clear purpose, and being able to draw meaning from our work is a huge part of both motivation and wellbeing. However, finding purpose and meaning when it feels like the goal posts are moving, or even when there is uncertainty around job security, can be tricky to do. Often, when we work with teams in these spaces we observe disengagement, despondency and a sense of ‘opt out’. But it is possible to create the opportunity to have skin in the game.

…we can step into the change space with a plan, with kindness and with others.

Set a simple, time-bound, relevant goal that resonates with people.

I have worked with teams recently where this has been: “we want to re-design pathway X by the end of March”; “we know our roles are changing, but we want to leave X legacy before we do”; “we want to come together as a team and support each other to the end of this process”.

Having skin in the game doesn’t mean being in it forever, it means focussing on what we do together while we are here.

3. Prioritise development

Reflecting on my early career, I often found myself grumbling that we left resilience training too late. It was only when we were in crisis that we tried to throw the life raft out. I would like to formally retract my grumble.

Developing together, towards a shared goal, drawing on the richness of all our collective experiences, is powerful. Answering the question “how do we best work together, to achieve our shared goals, in the flux of change?” is an eminently sensible thing to prioritise. The trick is to do it intentionally – at Kaleidoscope we believe that these things happen best when thoughtfully considered and designed.

When we can’t slow down the pace or volume of change, our reality is a world that can feel a little chaotic. Maybe the reason so many people have so much to say about change is because it is hard, it is constant and it impacts us all. But we can step into the change space with a plan, with kindness and with others.