BREXIT – “All Change”

BREXIT  – “All change” by Biddy Lloyd Jones

Hearing that we are to leave the EU seems to have been a surprise for many of us, including some of those who voted for it.  We have catapulted ourselves, as a nation, headlong into Change.

Change in an organisation has many guises and many different responses as will Brexit.  Even when it is a desired change, it can affect us more than we realise.  We know it is coming and we train ourselves not to get worked up about it and to look like we are not afraid of it, look like we in fact welcome it.  We may even have been involved in setting the new direction.  We have seen Kotter’s change curve and we know we will go through the emotions of shock, denial etc.  I have seen many businesses who have executed change management in a text book fashion.  So why hasn’t it worked?

In my experience, there needs to be a period of acknowledging “Letting Go”, William Bridges book, Managing Transitions tells us more about the three defined parts of it.

• Letting Go….characterised by sadness, anger and frustration
• Transition…..characterised by excitement, then confusion, enthusiasm, then concern
• New Beginnings….characterised by excitement and discovery, acceptance and resilience

When I found his model, I was hugely relieved.  We were working with a business who had implemented change a year previously, before we met them, and who couldn’t work out why there was a lack of morale, lack of resilience and lack of interest, despite the fact that there had been strong consultation with teams before the changes were implemented.  The director in charge had done all the right things but was bewildered by the lack of energy.

Over a period of a month, we were able to put into place workshops where everyone was just allowed to vent.  We used William Bridges framework to help them enquire into how they felt about it.  We spent time looking at what they had had to let go of and found;

• Some people were still doing their old job as well as their new one
• Some people were still trying to maintain the relationships with those from before and asking them for help when they could no longer give it
• Some people simply hadn’t acknowledged the need to let go of:
  -The relationships with previous managers and team member
  -Their physical workspace
  -Their confidence in their work – “new” was scary and simply “new ”
  -Their sense of their personal identity (I am a manager of 6 people I know really well and like and they see me as competent and knowledgeable – I’m the guy they come to) sadly not any more. The promotion meant fewer direct reports, less contact with the wider team and more time working across departments – no more being the “go to” guy.
  -The actual work they did – whilst realising the job was different, under stress, they reverted to doing more of the things they had done previously because subconsciously they were seeking the confidence that gave them.

I really valued my time with this group.  They were honest and heart-warmingly frank in their responses and we rode the wave together.  We have all had to let go and move on at some point in our lives and it is well to remind ourselves what that was like.  Intellectual management training must be accompanied with compassion and enormous self-honesty.
It is OK to find things hard and to be willing to share that.  And the relationships between them deepened far and above what they had imagined. I felt very privileged to have been a part of it with them.

So as we move towards Brexit, maybe rather than trying to pre-empt the issues perhaps we each need to acknowledge what we must let go of, good or bad, individually or as a nation.  We must remember that the Transition will be confusing and frustrating as well as exciting and when we reach the new beginning, we will be ready.