Adapting to changes is critical to our everyday lives.
Whether the change revolves around climate to a new government policy, we must
adapt to change in order for us to “survive”. From the business standpoint,
adapting to change often times brings positive benefits: leading to resolutions
or improvements in the workplace (Brown, 2011). Despite its benefits however,
every change comes with a set of obstacles.
Adapting to change can sometimes be a time consuming
and difficult process. While there are many reasons to why people resist to
change, most of them do so because of the loss of control, amount of
uncertainty, and lack of confidence in adapting to change (Kanter, 2012). To
avoid going through stress, people therefore often make excuses. After
reviewing Daryl Watkins’ 50 Reasons Not
to Change I was able to find a few that I’ve used before. An example of
change I recall with my workplace was when they set new instructions and other
standards on student degree mapping (course recommendations). Just a few weeks
before the announcement, I established my own degree map template. The template
took several days to make and included special computer coding that sped up the
process in making the maps. The moment I heard the announcement, I felt very
frustrated due to the amount of time and effort placed in making my own
template. In addition, the university set new timelines on when maps must be
completed.
Just as Seth Godin mentioned in his talk The Tribes We Lead, I was able to adapt
these changes with the help of “tribes”. In summary, Godin believes that
tribes, or small groups with shared ideas and values is what drives people to
lead and make changes (Godin, 2009). In this case, my tribe consisted of my
fellow co-workers. As everyone was adapting to the new policies, each of us
started to see the benefits about the new policies. What really drove me into
accepting the change however were the ideas and shortcuts we came across when
making the degree maps. For instance, an advisor from my neighboring campus
established and distributed an electronic spreadsheet that automatically wrote
the full course title with just the course number. This saved us a lot of time:
where before we had to type everything manually. In addition, I wouldn’t have
been able to use this file with my previous template, as the file is not
compatible with my template. Since saving time was convenient, this idea
motivated me to stick with the new template my university required us to use.
Seth Godin’s video was very informative and reminded
me of some tips to consider when advising students. While it’s a small fraction
of students, a challenge I constantly face is to have students accept and take online
classes. Like most universities, my school is becoming more specialized in
online courses. In addition to most students ranging ages 40 and older, they
are often times used to traditional on-campus courses. Overwhelmed in adapting
to the online style of learning, I try to overcome this by listing the benefits
of taking online courses. The key to overcome resistance to change is through
motivation (Brown, 2011). Just as Godin mentioned, I often times like to share
personal experiences as a student to inform students (Godin, 2009). To boost
their confidence, I also provide walkthrough sessions in-person and by email
for all students. By the end of the session, students are not only informed,
but they often times feel more confident and are aware that they have advisors
that could help them throughout their degree program.
References:
Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to
organization development (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Godin, S. (2009). Seth Godin: The tribes we lead
[Video File]. TED. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead
Kanter, R. (2012). Ten Reasons People Resist Change. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/09/ten-reasons-people-resist-chang
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