On the cusp of a New Year, what are we learning about how to manage change in a world like ours? Metathesiophobia is fear of change. Just reading the word might cause some anxiety if change is nigh in your professional or personal life.
Seismic shifts in organizational change management are on the horizon. Social psychologist Kurt Lewin is often regarded as an iconic foundational thinker in Change Management theory, and his work relied heavily on systems thinking. How do systems work to navigate change?
In 1948, Lewin elucidated three basic components of change management as "unfreezing, movement, and refreezing." This model has experienced numerous adaptations, nuances, expansions, and revisions as practitioners engaged the shift toward outcomes-based objectives. Overt business vernacular introduced concepts associated with market-driven analytics, predictable outcomes and repeatable practices, incorporating top-down implementation strategies and mitigating resistance. Working with early adopters and innovators became commonplace in the 90s and 2000s as change management practitioners melded strategic planning and implementation with project and change management objectives. As might be expected, the emerging "field" of change management became subject to a vetting and certification process, engaging successful business entrepreneurs with MBAs and CPAs, along with organizational development specialists to outline best practices for ensuring the bottom line. As a result, change management reflected the purview and training of brilliant business minds, and suffered their paradigmatic limitations.
Enter biomimicry - imitating Nature. I enjoyed a significant professional era engaging undergraduate and graduate students in environmental ethics in the first decade of the 21st century. My research, teaching and advising suggested that business models alone were insufficient to the task of incorporating sustainable change at the organizational scale and beyond. A strictly bottom-line approach lacked fundamental insights from neuroscience and Nature about human engagement in the process of change.
As we mirror organic processes, our cognitive capacities expand beyond myopic concerns and objectives. Silo mentality abates. Our "We" becomes much wider. Our space-time-rhythm slows. By leveraging Nature's own evolutionary adaptive capacities to navigate complex, significant change - not by mitigating resistance, but by natural attractors - change management practitioners are learning and implementing micro- and macrocosmic processes for incremental, mutually beneficial, adaptive, and sustainable change. Flexibility, resilience, increased tensile strength from widespread network investment, social viability and the attenuating ethical commitment of engaged constituents all led to a broader understanding of change management as adaptive, reflective, and sustainable.
As an adaptive change management consultant, I advise organizations and individuals to pay close attention to Nature's patterns, rhythms, and complex sensory palate to bring their understanding of the whole to the forefront. Biomimetic approaches to change require a skill set much more nuanced than digital acuity. Acquiring adaptive skills to ever-evolving tech advances remains one of the key indicators of reported stress, burnout and turnover. Centeredness. Grounding. Mindfulness. These are all terms more commonly heard in navigating change successfully. Communication, mutual protection, resilience, and co-creative adaptation require inter-dependent organisms to flourish in the art and science of patience, listening, and collaboration. Full-sensory awareness, embodied energy practice, critical thinking, language skills, and the capacity for sustained personal and communal reflection are paramount to biomimetic approaches to change management.
Long-term organizational health requires a deep dive into biomimetic approaches to change management. If you need assistance, I'll be happy to work with you. Or, perhaps ask your compost! The best students are not afraid to go deeper and get their hands dirty. And it's certainly a lot of fun!
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