Learning how to accept change and not perceive it as the enemy is a talent you can learn how to master. But effective change management is a process that doesn’t happen over-night.
As you will discover later in this blog, change came rushing down on me as well, but I realized early on in the process of going blind that I could not take myself too seriously.
I want to pause here to point out that this blog post is not a competition for whose change is more profound or difficult; it is the opportunity for you to reflect on what change is currently affecting your life.
What is causing you to despair or lose sleep? Is it a missed promotion? A divorce or maybe the birth of a child? Whatever the occasion, difficult or joyous, it is change!
How are you facing it?
Effective Change Management – a Process That Deals With 3 Types of Change
If you’re like the rest of us, you’ve tried to avoid change and found that doesn’t work. So let’s try and do something completely different today.
Let’s try to understand the change process so we can learn how to stay a step ahead, and live a full life causing, surviving, and thriving with change.
So what are the three types of change?
- Environmental change—the one that simply happens: you age, a cold winter kills your crop, you get a bad diagnosis;
- Purposeful change—the one you make happen on purpose, or someone else does and it affects you;
- Disruptive change—the purposeful change with deep, deep consequences (good or bad) that is triggered by you, or someone else.
Effective Change Management – Process the Idea That Change Will Happen
he first thing we need to do in order to prepare for change is to accept that change will happen! You will make change happen! The potential enemy is HOW WE REACT TO THE CHANGE.
The enemy is when change grabs us unawares, because we stood rigidly and neglected to stay informed, to seek input, to challenge our current thinking!
So how do we deal with the shifting elements of our life without feeling dizzy from the vortex?
In my new book, “Blind Spots: How to Embrace Curiosity, Disruption, and Imagination to See Yourself as a Change Agent” I unravel my life experience on how to best adapt to change, and how to see change as a causal thing, but not the enemy.
Effective Change Management – A Process That Requires the Right Tools
I’d like to share with you the most important tools you’ll need in your quest for effective change management – a process that helped me:
- An Open-Mind
- Friends & Family
- Curiosity
It was after I saw a documentary on Albert Einstein that I realized how important curiosity is in not only adapting to change, but being in the front of it. Upon being asked about his intelligence, Einstein said, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
What an epiphany! We don’t need to be smart—just curious. And I do know how to wake up your curiosity. Just like mine was awakened by family and friends, I hope that my advice will be a catalyst to help you move into a relationship of curiosity in your own life.
Would you like to learn more about effective change management, start the process of achieving your visions and desires, and overcome some of the most difficult changes imaginable?
Let me show you how.
André van Hall, The Curiosity Instigator and Book Author
