How to “Buy Into” Workplace Changes with Enthusiasm

How do you react to workplace changes? If you’re like most employees, change equals annoyance. Should you react like many others, workplace changes cause anger and displeasure. However, has your annoyance or displeasure ever led to a decision reversal? Probably not.

Why Workplace Changes Are Annoying

Understanding the “why” may help you manage change more effectively. Workplace change is annoying because most people choose to do “comfortable” things. This tendency is not restricted to the workplace. Humans prefer doing things—eating, playing, relaxing, family activities, etc.—with which they are comfortable. For example, if you are comfortable eating a steak and mashed potatoes on Wednesdays, you seldom opt for fish, whether eating at home or in a restaurant.

Workplace changes move employees from the comfortable to the uncomfortable zone. Initial reactions, therefore, tend to be annoyance, discomfort, and/or confusion. New procedures and systems upset your definition of the “normal and usual.”

Why Workplace Changes Are Necessary

Systems, markets, economies, and technologies evolve with startling rapidity in the 21st century. Employers must keep up, whether they want to or not. Your employer is not immune to these realities and must implement changes when necessary.

No company can afford to fall behind their competition or their market. As an employee, you do not want your employer to trail their competition, as it could pose risks to your job status. This is a risk you should never accept.

Technology, necessary for all businesses to compete strongly, is a particularly strong change motivator. As new hardware and software appears in your industry, your employer must make rapid “go” or “no go” decisions to adopt new systems. Decisions to forego new systems can be an unacceptable risk for most employers.

Therefore, these constant developments often dictate consistent workplace changes. This is a major difference from the business environment of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Even technological evolution, considered rapid at the time, moved “lazily” along by current standards of measurement.

For example, in the 1970s, the computer universe, pre-PCs, was ruled by large main frames and the emerging mid-range hardware (remember Digital Equipment Corp, whose mid-range hardware was cutting edge). Toward the end of the decade, service bureaus, offering users desktop terminals at employer sites, made strong progress.

By today’s standards, these tech developments moved at a slow snail’s pace. Significant technological evolution now moves much faster, requiring faster and more numerous workplace changes than ever before.

How to Buy Into Workplace Change With Enthusiasm

Try some of these tips to improve your attitude with workplace changes.

• Convince yourself to adopt the coming changes positively BEFORE implementation. Resist the temptation to give in to your natural uncertainty of projected workplace changes. Commit to develop confidence in your employer and adopt a positive attitude about the impending changes.
• Believe that the changes are for the betterment of your employer and your job. Similar to the above tip, trust senior management. Unless you learn otherwise, accept that your executive managers would only adopt workplace changes that will benefit the company and increase your performance.
• Mentally buy into coming changes on a conscious AND subconscious level. This may be more challenging if you are unsettled by the coming changes. But, understand that, however powerless we may feel, we have total control over at least one thing in life: our thoughts. No one can control our thoughts but ourselves. Use this absolute power to disallow any negative conscious thought, which will register with your subconscious mind, which accepts everything you tell it as fact, for better or worse. Filling your conscious mind with positive thoughts about coming workplace changes will beckon your subconscious to follow.
• Be sure to fully understand the specifics of impending changes. Much of the classic resistance to workplace change is born from uncertainty and confusion. Asking all of your questions, however minor, about the reason for and nature of impending changes will reassure you and keep your confidence level high. You’ll be much more comfortable and enthusiastic.
• Communicate any disagreements—politely and intelligently—to management. Disagreement is not annoyance. However, if you fully understand the proposed changes and disagree with one or more components—for good, solid operational reasons—let your manager know. Expressing the “why” generating your disagreement might lead to correcting an overlooked negative consequence of some new workplace procedures.
• Promise yourself to exhibit enthusiasm for workplace changes. If you must, “fake it till you make it” by expressing enthusiasm you may not truly feel. Even when you don’t really feel enthusiastic, you will if you practice diligently.

Accept that workplace change will come whether you want it to or not. Adopting an enthusiastic attitude and commitment to helping, not hindering, its implementation will eliminate much of the annoyance and uncertainty you feel. You may even become a workplace change leader instead of a dissenter.

Source:
http://www.businessperform.com/articles/change-management/buy-in_to_change.html