Educational Origami

I am involved in a change process at the moment. The change involves removing a software item and replacing it with a similar but different tool. The change has been signalled literally for years, but never actioned until now, so the people involved have never changed their use patterns to the new tool.They haven’t changed because why would you. If you have a tool that works and another that does the same thing but slightly differently why would you change. Change is not comfortable, nice or enjoyable

This is not a criticism of the users but of those of us who are responsible. We should have actioned this in a timely fashion.

However….

Having announce the change and a date, the responses of staff have been interesting to see. I have often thought that the responses to change mirror the stages of grief. The process is individual, the time taken to process is dependent on the individual, the intensity of the stages is individual, but all seem to follow the same process. The stages are:

1. Denial – “This doesn’t effect me” or “They can’t do this”
2. Anger – “its not fair, who is responsible for this”
3. Bargaining – “well can’t you just not change my software” or “can’t you just leave it on my machine”.
4. Depression – this is so bad I can’t work etc
5. Acceptance – This is how it is lets get on with it

Does this sound familiar?

Change isn’t comfortable, but knowing what to expect helps.