For many organisations and professionals alike the last few months watching countries across the globe, their businesses, and their people adapt to change in how we work and play, has been unlike anything anyone has seen or been through before. Many businesses have redesigned their business models, shifted the sale of their goods online, sourced new technology in an attempt to remain profitable, retain their staff and be resilient so as to come out "the other side". For some businesses this is change on a grand scale, for some others it is merely transitioning some of their already agile workforce to their homes. Whatever the scale, it remains that this change has us "all in it together".
Are we seeing some of the same behaviours in response to COVID-19 we would typically see in organisational change?
Inside and out of organisations we have seen varied behaviour in response to the changes in our world. People are panicked. Many employees are panicked as they fear for their future and what it means for them. Whether it’s coronavirus, a restructure, a downsizing (or right sizing as it is commonly called, semantics my dear Watson), we can all agree that people react in different ways to change. Where there is uncertainty there is often also emotionally driven behaviour.
When we experience fear we activate our sympathetic nervous system which is responsible for our 'fight, flight or freeze' response which stimulates our amygdala or our emotional brain to take over, causing our prefrontal cortex, or our rational brain, to shut down (or go offline). Suddenly our primal instincts are out in full force and it is every man for himself from stockpiling toilet paper, attacking each other on social media, to questionable workplace tactics within organisations as employees fight to make themselves an indispensable asset. These behaviours don’t seem entirely rational in a COVID world and in organisational restructures, but it is important to note that these behaviours are often purely emotion driven as individual’s 'fight' to take control over an otherwise uncontrollable situation, and in these current circumstance particularly where the vision and outcome is unclear.
In addition to fear based decision making, many culture change professionals may be observing the current compliance culture (or lack thereof) in response to COVID-19 and recognising the same mindsets, behaviours and challenges we typically see in organisational change. From how our leadership has behaved, how well we have ‘complied’ as a nation and the various ‘shortcuts’ that we continue to see.
Are the mindsets we are hearing towards the Coronavirus simply mirroring individuals own mindsets towards risk?
In Australia for example, are the behaviours we are seeing and the perceived lack of taking this serious related to our national mantra of “she’ll be right”. How many times have you heard this in your lifetime and cringed at the lack of taking responsibility for safety and risk? Trawling social media and listening to online conversations it is filled with accounts such as “When is the government going to lock us down so people will take it seriously?”, “why haven’t our leaders shut things down”? Does this sound familiar in organisational behaviour? These sentiments are all too familiar in organisational change as many employees wait for someone else to tell them how to behave and manage their own risks.
We’ve seen it with our own eyes or heard it through social media whereby people are finding loopholes to the government's recommendations. The government says stay home, or if you do go out for a walk please stay near your home, yet people still continue to ask if they can go to a beach providing their reasons (or excuses) such as “but I can still go to the hairdresser so surely I can go to the beach?” “we will stay away from people at the beach” or “but it’s a secluded beach”. Are people merely trying to find shortcuts to official directives or just wanting to “stick it to the man?”
Can we borrow from organisational change principles and apply them to COVID-19?
Whether it’s changing attitudes and behaviours within organisations, mothers groups, schools, or wider society, we understand that just as human beings are all different, as are the rates of adoption of change. We have our innovators or thought leaders, the early adopters, the early majority, the late majority, and then we have our laggards (Rogers, 2003). In a typical workplace culture /change transformation we use our innovators and our early adaptors to bring along a critical mass to gain momentum and buy in. We work hard on the laggards, appealing to what is important to them to bring them on the journey. But in a COVID environment do we have time for these laggards to process the information, make sense of it, quarrel with it, refute it and then either come on board or do as they always have done? Are the drastic measures that we are seeing across the globe accounting for these laggards? Have we really convinced them of the necessity FOR THEM to comply? How do we get people to come on board?
Practical tips to apply
The following contains some practical tips borrowed from organisational change principles that we can apply to help anyone, employees, relatives and friends through this challenging time.
- Acknowledge their fears and rebuttals- it is tough having to work differently, it does suck not being able to go outside, it does suck not being able to go to the beach with friends and family. When we acknowledge a person's challenges we convey empathy and the person feels heard. This often means they are less likely to argue their position which only serves to reinforce in their mind their position (the opposite of what we want).
· Balance business with people response- focussing on tasks such as ‘saving the business’ or ‘getting more work’ may be seen as the best solution to keeping your people in work, just as we know that simply putting the fire out is the solution to a bush fire. Your people are your assets in many ways and the impact on them in this climate can not be underestimated or forgotten.
· Promote the ‘why’- make it personal for people, helping them understand that their moments of choice now can have far greater impact for them and their families. Help them appreciate that changes today can build a better future.
· Communicate, communicate, communicate- even if you don’t have the information, let your people know that you don’t have any further information. In the absence of information, people like to fill in the blanks with hypotheses, or theories which leads to Chinese whispers. Control the narrative by communicating what you know and being honest about what you don’t know.
· Chunk it down for them- when we bombard people with too much information our brains become overloaded and it causes a ‘paralysis’ (think about when you want to buy pasta sauce at the supermarket and there are 20 different brands, it all becomes too much and so you decide to buy pizza instead!). Give them bite size pieces of information to digest with clear actions.
· Be vulnerable- as a leader now is the time to also share how you might be feeling. A vulnerable leader is a human leader. When you show your human side you demonstrate authenticity which promotes integrity. And we know that integrity is a vital ingredient to trust!
· Remind people of their strengths- for those who are old enough (I certainly am), can link back to the start of 2009 when business were feeling the impacts of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and redundancies were common place. What helped us through then? Appeal to their sense of resilience, patience, and collective focus that enabled us to come out the other side. The world was forever changed after that and businesses became smarter and more resilient!
Good luck with implementing these tips!
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