Our the next few articles I'm going to focus on change. The next four will be about change specifically, and the following three are closely linked to it. To be honest you could make a change for many if not all of the models we look at having a role in supporting change (and the issues that arise from it).
But let’s not overstretch and let’s stay focused on change. We often talk about ‘the change curve’, but I think there’s more than one, and I’ll expand on this over the next few weeks.
I’m going to start with the curve most people are familiar with and that’s the Kubler Ross curve. This is useful in understanding the process when a change happens to us. I’ve referred to this as a negative curve in the title, and this might be a little unfair. What I’m talking about is a change that we haven’t chosen, one that’s been imposed upon us.
In this situation we are generally satisfied with the status quo, or even happy with it, before something comes along which upsets things. The impact might range from mildly frustrating to deeply unsettling, but the stages are broadly similar. Let’s assume the situation is your section of an organisation being disbanded. Your role (which you love) is coming to an end, and you’re being re-deployed into something you are less than keen on.
Stage one is shock and denial. ‘I can’t believe they’re doing this, this decision makes no sense’ etc. This can then see us move into anger. ‘This isn’t right, I’ve given year of service, the work we do is essential’. If anger doesn’t make any impact, we usually move to the bargaining stage. ‘Maybe if I reduced my hours, combined my role with other duties, found funding from elsewhere, etc. If all this proves impotent then we hit the low point of realising that the change is going to happen, there’s nothing we can do about it, and we don’t like or agree with it. Over time this change becomes the new normal and we find a way to live with it and accept it in some way.
This is also the curve that explains the grief process, and this makes sense. If we’re happy with our circumstances, and something comes along to change that, then by definition we are losing something, so the Kubler-Ross curve depicts the process of loss and our reactions as we face it.
Now there are three points I want to make in relation to this model which help us make use of us. The first one I’ve touched on already, and that’s the depth of impact. A loss can be frustrating and annoying (think misplacing your remote), or it can be deeply profound (such as redundancy or losing a loved one). The process we go through therefore, might comprise of the same stages, but the depth and impact of those stages will be significantly different.
The second point is speed, and it’s often linked to that first point. At times we can process a loss and move through these stages quite quickly. At other times we find a loss hard to process and our progression through these stages is tortuously slow. It often depends on the depth and significance of the impact.
My final point is about direction. The change curve is not necessarily a one way process. We might be doing well, progressing and dealing with loss and change, but then hit a bump which knocks us backwards. This doesn’t mean we can never get through the change, it just means we need to reset from where we are and start moving forward again.
That’s as much as I want to cover in this article, but next week I’ll introduce a second change curve and a few more points to helps us understand and navigate this complex topic.
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