Ideas on illustrating change management issues

When people are confronted with the need or opportunity to change, especially when it's 'enforced', as they see it, by the organization, they can become emotional. So can the managers who try to manage the change. Diffusing the emotional feelings, taking a step back, encouraging objectivity, are important to enabling sensible and constructive dialogue. To this end, managers and trainers can find it helpful to use analogies to assist themselves and other staff to look at change in a more detached way.


On this site there are several illustrations which can be used for this purpose, depending on the type of change faced, and the aspect that is to be addressed. Here are a few examples, useful for team meetings, presentations, one-to-one counselling or self-reminder, particularly to help empathise with others facing change:


On the Stories section look at 'Murphy's Plough' (negative thinking = obstacle to change) and 'We've always done it that way' (not questioning need for change). Both good aids for understanding and explaining why people - all of us - find it difficult to change assumptions, conditioned thinking, habit, routine, etc.
Look also at the Monkey Story, as to how policies, practices, attitudes and even cultures can become established, and how the tendency is to accept rather than question.


Just as the state of 'unconscious incompetence', needs to be developed into 'conscious competence' to provide a basis for training, so a person'ssubjective emotion needs to be developed into objectivity before beginning to help them handle change. None of us is immune from subjectivity, ignorance or denial. The lessons and reminders found in stories and analogies can help to show a new clear perspective.


Aesop's Fables section has other short and beautifully simple analogies useful for illustrating aspects of causing or dealing with change, for example (all on the Aesop's Fables section):


The Crow and the Pitcher (change being provoked by pressure or necessity)
The North Wind and the Sun (gentle persuasion rather than force)
The Lion and The Ass (enforced change - might is right)
The Crab and his Mother (lead by example and evidence - or you'll not change people)
The Miller, his Son and the Ass (no single change is likely to please everyone - everyone wants something different)
The Oak and the Reeds (the need for tolerance - changer or 'changees')
The Rich Man and the Tanner, (time softens change - given time people get used to things)
The Ass and the Mule (agree to reasonable change now or you can risk far worse enforced change in the future)