We are currently undergoing quite a few changes at work. People are changing departments, tasks are changed. The way we work and routines are evolving. The human species are probably most capable of change among all living creatures at mother earth, but still change is very frightening. I find this strange. Currently I am reading about how the human evolved and conquered the world in “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond. Apparently we all evolved from a crib in Africa and spread all over the place like weed in a summer garden. But move my cubicle one floor down and my world collapses. What happened?

Change is necessary.
In almost all businesses I have ever worked at, change is the only stable factor. Changes happen and change is needed for businesses to survive. The business that will end up with success is the one with the most adaptive employees. If you can’t accept change at you workplace, you might be in trouble.

The big change: Accepting changes.
Leadership in a changing environment can be a challenge. People want to quit, people get negative and resist change, making the change more painful and prolonged. I currently read Alex’s blog post “Change with a smile” – A happy workplace is essential to make the changes a smooth process. I think my co-workers are happy, so this should be a lot easier. I have talked about motivation, and how to deal with challenges over and over again, making them pro active to any new challenging coming their way. I am not worried about them. But we are changing the way other people work, people that have never had me as a boss before, people that does not know what life is like on our floor. How can I get them to accept the new changes? I do not want to end up with a lot of new tasks and people fleeing all over the place.

Role play works on kids.
And role play sure do magic around the office as well. I and a fellow department leader got the honors of making a presentation about our future customer care centre. My thought was how will I get them to accept changes? What if we showed a normal dialogue between a customer and an agent? How we work today, and one dialogue on how we want to work tomorrow. I do not know if it was our great Oscar winning acting or the great new ideas that made the applause. But one thing is sure; I have never seen so many being positive about change at once. Lead by example is a great saying, lead by role play I say.