I am a big fan of knowledge management. The more I learn about it, the more I realize it is very related to change management. Let’s take the example of changing the way we hold our meetings. I believe that most of us are aware of the challenges we face in meetings however we continue to put ourselves in the situation of less than great meetings.
Challenges people brought forward, in a course I gave last week on participatory meetings, included not having an agenda or sticking to it, hidden agendas, side conversations, domination by one person, endless power points and many other issues. Still, changing the way we do things doesn’t appear to be easy. Why is this?
I could blog forever on why it seems we can’t change things. More interesting to me is the fact that change is possible and we could all use a little motivation to take steps to work towards change. As a person that has faced this challenge, I recommend the following:
- Start small but keep the big dreams in your radar
- Find champions
- Look for new ideas outside your ‘normal’ workplace and networks
- Demonstrate by example
Good luck!!
2 thoughts on “Why is change so difficult?”
Interesting post. Change Management may sometimes be more Change Nudging. And of course, there are early adapters, and then those who follow happily, and those that follow because that’s where the ship has sailed to.
As the bumper sticker says: SHIFT HAPPENS!
Hi Michelle,
I agree that changing the familiar format of a meeting can be scary, mostly for the organizer, as they are no longer in control of the inputs and outputs. However, if you can muster that courage to let the group decide what is the most useful thing to talk about, and way to talk about it (or maybe not talk at all…) then often you get much more interesting results. Also, more people are involved in co-creating that idea so more should be involved in making it happen. Once you start changing things, people like it and it can snowball into an innovation free-for-all. We are just starting to see that happen here. Good luck!