2 What are you trying to change and why?

Change is an inevitable continual process within organisations. Most people will experience change, from a small policy change to the introduction of new technical systems to new product delivery to major organisational restructures and changes to ways of working.

Your involvement in change will vary based on your role within the organisation. Whether you are leading or adapting to change, understanding the change process is useful to help you feel more comfortable with change. If you are experienced in change management, it is an opportunity to reflect on your own practice and consider whether your approach could be developed to help others on their journey of change.

In the last activity you were asked to reflect on how you feel about change. Acknowledging how comfortable you are with change will help you consider your approach if you are leading change and raise your awareness of how you naturally react to change so you can build your own resilience for adapting and accepting it.

Understanding how you feel will assist in your approach when a need for change arises and may assist in how you answer the following key questions:

• What are you trying to change?
• Why?

If you have identified it is a change that is necessary, always ask yourself WHY? Is it for a personal or professional reason that you want the change? We often think a change is required because of how we approach tasks/situations. While it might benefit you as an individual, is it something that is actually needed or will make a difference to others?

If a change is identified by others and you are either leading the change on their behalf or working as part of a change team, while you still need to understand what you are trying to change and why, you are not the owner of the answer but rather a facilitator – someone to ensure delivery of the change that is actually required. In some cases, this can mean either recommending a change in a different direction or stopping the initiative altogether.

Ensuring that you understand your ‘Why’ in relation to the organisational strategy and needs is essential for change. To understand this approach, the Hybrid working: planning for the future [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] course explores ‘What’s your why?’ in more depth. In the meantime, we consider two approaches in brief in the next section.