"Everybody has accepted by now that change is unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like death and taxes — it should be postponed as long as possible and no change would be vastly preferable. But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are living in, change is the norm." Peter Drucker. Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999). This power point was created for a Lifestage training used to help employees in organizations understand and manage the emotional and psychological impact of workplace change.

1. 1
Navigating Workplace
Change
 Lifestage, Inc
 "Everybody has accepted by now that change is
unavoidable. But that still implies that change is like
death and taxes — it should be postponed as long as
possible and no change would be vastly preferable.
But in a period of upheaval, such as the one we are
living in, change is the norm."
Peter Drucker
Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999

2. 2
The accelerated pace of change impacts every aspect
of 21st century life – the environment around us as well
2
as our inner life
 “Technology is evolving at
roughly 10 million times the
speed of natural evolution. For
all its glitz and swagger,
technology and the whole
interactive, revved-up
economy that goes with it, is
merely an outer casing for our
inner selves. And these inner
selves, these primate souls of
ours with their ancient social
ways, change slowly. Or not at
all.”
 Brian Arthur, “How Fast Is Technology
Evolving?” Scientific American (February
1997): 107.

3. 3
“Change is like tossing a
pebble into a pond.”
 “Change creates ripples, reaching
distant spots in ever-widening
circles. The ripples disrupt other
departments, important
customers, people well outside the
venture or neighborhood, and
they start to push back, rebelling
against changes they had nothing
to do with that interfere with their
own activities.”
 “Ten Reasons People Hate Change” hbr.org,
9/25/12
3

4. 4
“It isn’t the changes that you do you in,
it’s the transitions. They aren’t the same
thing.”
William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making The Most of Change,
4
Change is
situational-
It hinges on new
directions, new
plans, and
on what is
emerging

5. 5
Transition is psychological
It hinges on
letting go of
the old reality
and the old
identity we
had before
the change
took place.
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6. 6
Even positive change can trigger a
sense of threat.
• Loss of control
• Loss of status
• Challenge to familiar habits of
mind
• Heightened uncertainty
• Need to make sudden
adjustments
• Concerns about competence,
e.g. we will lack the skill to
meet evolving challenges and
fall behind as a result;

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7. 7
Transition is an emotional and
psychological process

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8. 8
“Even positive and resilient people find
workplace change challenging.”
Gregory Shea and Robert Gunther, Navigating Workplace Change
 Change involves loss
 Change is physically
and emotionally
stressful
 Workplace change
often demands difficult
psychological
adjustments while
maintaining the same
or bigger workload
8

9. 9
“Our sense of self-determination is often the first
thing to go when faced with a potential
change coming from someone else.”
“Ten Reasons People Resist Change” Harvard Business Review Sept 25, 2012
 Change violates habits of
mind that are protected by
an arsenal of defenses.
These defenses can
produce intense emotional
reactions and sometimes flat
out resistance to what is
happening.
 New policies require
adjustment and adaptation
to a new system, authority
structure or requirement that
changes roles and
relationships
9

10. 10
Change that has a significant
psychological impact can
trigger the stress response-an
“amygdala hijacking”
 “When the amygdala is active
with blood and oxygen, there
is less activation in the
prefrontal cortex. Our thinking
power is disrupted and there
are deficits in our problem
solving, because the blood
and oxygen are in the
amygdala versus the
prefrontal cortex. It is like losing
10 to 15 IQ points temporarily,
which explains “what was I
thinking?” So we are thinking
but with less capacity and
brain power.”
 Lieberman, M.D., “Social Cognitive
Neuroscience: A Review of Core
Processes.” The Annual Review of
Psychology, 2007. 58:259–89

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11. 11
For effective renewal:
its not how long,
its how well we relax and
recharge
“The importance of restoration is
rooted in our physiology. Human
beings aren’t designed to
expend energy continuously.
Rather, we’re meant to pulse
between spending and
recovering energy.”
Tony Schwartz, “Relax! You’ll Be More
Productive” New York Times, Feb. 9, 2013

12. 12
The US Marines report remarkable results
from training soldiers in mindfulness
meditation.
After 8 weeks of meditating
15-minutes/ day, the soldiers
reported enhanced capacity
to:
• Deal with anxiety, stress,
depression and insomnia;
• Stay calm and focused in
the thick of battle, while
improving overall mental
and physical fitness.
Danny Penman, “Mindfulness: Finding Peace In A
Frantic World” www.franticworld.com

13. 13
“In physical training, muscle strength
grows during periods of rest and
renewal”
The same principles that
apply to athletic
performance also hold true
for business
and work performance.
It is in periods of sleep and
downtime that our minds
recharge. The key is to
have the biggest waves
between activity and rest.“
Tony Schwartz, “Relax! You’ll Be More Productive” New York
Times, Feb. 9, 2013

14. 14
The perception that we have some
power over our response to events
lowers stress levels
14
It is possible to change
perception of events that we
cannot control and strengthen a
sense of autonomy through:
• Self-knowledge
• Mindfulness practices
• Cognitive-bias modification
Safiya Richardson, Jonathan A. Shaffer,
Louise Falzon, David Krupka, Karina W.
Davidson, Donald Edmondson. Meta-Analysis
of Perceived Stress and Its Association With
Incident Coronary Heart Disease. The
American Journal of Cardiology, 2012; 110
(12): 1711

15. 15
“Cognitive bias” drives
perception of events.
 Common cognitive biases impacting
workplace change:
 Ambiguity effect: The tendency to avoid
options for which missing information makes
the probability seem "unknown.”
 Attentional bias: The tendency of our
perception to be affected by our recurring
thoughts and mental patterns.
 Backfire effect: When people react to
disconfirming evidence by strengthening
their beliefs.
 Bandwagon effect: The tendency to do
(or believe) things because many other
people do (or believe) the same.

 Baron, J. (2007). Thinking and deciding (4th ed. ed.).
New York City: Cambridge University Press
 “Cognitive biases are instances
of evolved mental behavior.
Some are adaptive because
they lead to more effective
actions in given contexts or
enable faster decisions when
faster decisions are of greater
value. Others presumably result
from a lack of appropriate
mental mechanisms, or from the
misapplication of a mechanism
that is adaptive under different
circumstances.”
 Gigerenzer, G. & Goldstein, D. G. (1996).
"Reasoning the fast and frugal way: Models
of bounded rationality.". Psychological
Review 103: 650–669.
15

16. 16
What leads to new insights & discovery
also recharges creative energy for
renewal – it is most accessible to us
when we break up our routine.
"Only when the brain is confronted with stimuli
that it has not encountered before does it start
to reorganize perception. The surest way to
provoke the imagination, then, is to seek out
environments you have no experience with, e.g.
chemist Kary Mullis landed on the principle of
polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, not in a lab
but on a northern California highway.”
Gregory Burns, Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How To Think Differently
Harvard Business Review Press, 2010

17. 17
Some ideas for self-care during
periods of
workplace transition
 Make time for positive
interpersonal
connections;
 Identify people in your
network who have been
through a difficult
workplace change and
managed the process
effectively;
 Recognize negative
people and
environments and limit
contact;
 Engage in unfamiliar
creative activities that
require focusing of
attention and skill
development – these
trigger the reward
chemistry of the brain in
place of stress-chemistry
in the face of
uncertainty;
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18. 18
“You cannot control the river,
but you can control your
progress through it.”
 “ Even in a racing, rushing river, there
are pockets of calm, behind rocks
usually, where the river is actually
flowing upstream. And you can pull
into those eddies once you learn
how to do it, and you can actually sit
still while the river is racing
downstream all around you. And by
using a series of eddies, you can
move into one eddy, look
downstream, then go down to the
next eddy and then go down to the
next, making your way in a sort of
slow and orderly process through an
extraordinarily chaotic environment.
And in our work life, we see the same
type of thing where we feel like
we’re faced with a racing, rushing
river that we cannot control.”
 —Gregory Shea and Robert Gunther, Navigating Workplace Changeg
https://portal.lifeworks.com/materials-uk/
HPSActiveAssociatedFiles/16838.pdfWorkplace Change CD
18

19. 19
Lifestage, Inc
 Applied Improvisation
workshops
 Story Development
workshops and classes
 Workshop design
consultation
 Personal and professional
development
 www.livesinprogressnewsletter.
blogspot.com
 www.lifestage.org
 www.mostlytruethings.com