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Surviving the Stress of Corporate ChangeBy Sharron Stockhausen, MMA These days business acquisitions, mergers, and bankruptcies are as plentiful as ants at a picnic. The days of the stock market hovering in record high territory and creating double digit returns on investment are gone. Unemployment is up. And so is stress. Why? In a word, change. When the terrorists slammed those airplanes into American buildings and the field in Pennsylvania, little else made the lunch conversation agenda for weeks. People tried to figure out what would happen to them in both their professional and personal lives. The economy stopped shaking and began reeling large tremors. People lost their jobs. Community organizations pondered possibilities to keep their programs intact. Tax collectors anticipated lost revenues caused by reduced incomes, buying power, and real estate ownership. Things changed for a lot of people. Later companies like Enron and Global Crossings and K-Mart announced major economic problems and savings, retirements, and jobs went away. Things changed for a lot of people. Smaller companies experienced similar changes. One owner sold the business to another. A company moved into larger space. Employees retired or found other opportunities. Things changed for a lot of people. What can you do to survive the stress of corporate change? Take a good look at whatever the change is, then try to see the positive in it. If your organization is trying to go paperless, learn the process with an open mind. Look at the new system as a challenge rather than a problem. Try to find the benefit in going paperless. Most people focus on the negative. They’ll tell you that when the server goes down everything stops. They’ll tell you people will use more paper in the long run because everyone will print their own copies of documents. They may be right. But, with a little effort, they could see the benefits too. They could see that with a couple of clicks of the mouse they could have the document they need at their disposal without leaving their desk. They wouldn’t have to track down the paper copy in someone else’s inbox. They could also see that they could distribute a document in seconds rather than the minutes it previously took to duplicate, staple, address, sort, and distribute. They could see that change can be good for a lot of people. Human nature tends to like things orderly. We are creatures of habit. We have preferences on how we do things, how we see things, and how we live. When things happen that disrupt order, we experience stress. Since change is a major disruption, we tend to not like change much at first. When things don’t go as planned, we feel a loss. Something new replaces something we were counting on. We lose something and feel it. We prefer to deal with what we know rather than what we don’t know. Dealing with what we don’t know is uncertain. Add the feeling of uncertainty to the experience of loss and the stress begins to build. It’s good to remember that stress isn’t thrust upon us all at once. It takes time and our minds and bodies adjust during that period. Those adjustments can be demanding on us. Eventually we become more aware of our stress and want to do something about it. /p> I already said we should take a positive look at the change we’re facing. We should also recognize that different people react to change in different ways at first. Some are in denial. Some go on fact-finding missions before dealing with change. Some simply resist change at every turn. And, believe it or not, some people get excited about change. No matter what your initial reaction is, you can create the climate you need to cope with change in a positive way. Begin by getting as much information as you can about what’s going on. Of course there will be some things people won’t tell you. But the more information you get, the more you’ll feel as if you have some power in coping with change. Once you’ve gathered the information, determine which things are out of your control and which aren’t. Accept the things you can’t do anything about and concentrate on those you can. Realize things don’t always happen on your time table and let go of expectations that they will. Organizational change happens in steps. Those steps take planning and they take time to implement. Accept that as reality and you’ll find you can let go of a lot of what’s bothering you. Take care of yourself while the changes at work are occurring. You’ll need your mental, emotional, and physical health to get through the turmoil. It’s easier to keep yourself together in the first place than it is to pull yourself together when the stress is at its peak. Finally, congratulate yourself for your small successes in handling the change. Many of us were raised to be humble and to think of others first. That’s fine as long as you realize that if you don’t take care of yourself, someone else will have to. One of the best ways to think of others first is to see to it that you’re healthy enough to enjoy life with them rather than ask them to take care of you. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t see any end to the corporate
change that causes stress. We may as well learn to survive it. Things
change and they change for all of us at some point. That’s one reason life
is so exciting.
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© 2010 -Sharron Stockhausen - All Rights Reserved |
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