An Excerpt from Cultural Brilliance Radio – Interview with Julie Wilson, founder of the Institute for the Future of Learning
Claudette: We’re talking about the reality of change in organizations. So, what is the state of change you’re seeing right now? When you’re working with organizations and teams.
Julie: Well, the state of change reflects the external environment in which we find ourselves, Claudette. There’s a great acronym coined by the military a number of years ago where they were rethinking their strategy and coined the term ‘V-U-C-A’ – that we live in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world. And what I’m seeing inside organizations is that, we’re catching up to that reality with the various change management models, structures, methodologies that we’re using. In many ways, we’re at unchartered territory with regards to there being no cookie cutter beautiful little tool or methodology we can pull off the shelf and implement with one hundred percent fidelity and all will be fine and the change will be fine and the change will happen. It’s a much more messy endeavor than that which anybody would probably echo who is leading change right now.
Claudette: One of the things I have noticed in organizations when I work in them is this: sometimes the leader will announce the change and by the time a leader has announced the change, or the leadership team is announcing the change, they’ve gotten used to the idea of change. They tend to forget that when they announce the change to the rest of the organization, a lot of people can be bowled over – they’re saying, “what’s going on, why we’re doing this, we’re doing that?”
An organization has a huge change going on, they just expect everyone to fall into line and implement the change. And there seems to be this lack of awareness in some organizations among leadership that people need the same amount of time or similar amount of time to really get used to that change.
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