Understanding The Change Curve
Note: The Change Curve tool can be used in our personal and professional lives.
There is a tendency to resist change. Change in a business environment impacts employees, business relationships, customers, bosses, subordinates, you name it. It is up to our managers to carry out the duties of the company towards its customers while helping employees navigate through the change du jour.
Change could be due to economic crisis, losing a customer, gaining a new customer (thus much more work), a new project, etc.
The diagram below is the perfect tool for Change Timeline analysis. It gives the manager a bird’s, eye view of the situation and the action needed to take to make it through the journey.
Looking at the organizational change curve graph below, here is an example of how you use it:
Our company is moving along a certain equilibrium. Everyone is settled in their work habits and fairly happy. Then change is introduced. The fact is that with very few exceptions, the change affected productivity and attitude. It shatters the state of balance, the equilibrium.
Almost immediately there is a downshift in attitude and/or productivity. The state of inertia was shattered.
Our manager’s job is to minimize the downward slope.
Management should apply positive, uplifting pressure to reverse the downward trek. Our manager applies whatever is available to him to help the employees in the unit getting back to, at a minimum, the original equilibrium. These include sharing information, discussing future plans, helping the team see the big picture, genuinely be concerned about their own issues.
Whatever it takes, the downward trend has to be reversed.
Eventually it does. Once the unit turns the corner, our manager cannot rest on his laurels. Management continues leading the unit to greater heights and overtake the original equilibrium which translates to better unit, better productivity, better attitude, and better organization.
Remember, nothing will bring a unit down like pissed off employees.
When do we know that the change was successful? When the new equilibrium is on a higher plane than the original equilibrium.
change curve
How to use this tool? This is a general “map” for management to asses where the organization is as it processes business management change.
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Here are other pages which can help manage and understand change:
Minimize the Post Change Effect – the Hawthorne Effect
Incrementalize Your Change Approach