Don’t Help Your Teams “Cope” with Change. Pump Them Up for It.

Photo by Fabien Bazanegue on Unsplash

How to create a cultural transformation that will allow your company to thrive in the face of constant change

“I’ve got all these people complaining about there being too much change at work.” Edward’s client sat wringing his hands. “I don’t see things slowing down anytime soon, so how can I help my team cope with the pace of change?”

This client is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He and his teams are not the only ones wondering how to deal with change these days. With companies across industries going through massive digital transformation (among other big changes), leaders all over have been grappling with this question. These transformations can be seen as disruptive—people feel the change is too much too fast. Just look at the number of conversations about AI disruption caused by the release of ChatGPT.

The thing is, change isn’t going away. It isn’t slowing down either. Technology will continue to evolve at breakneck speeds, and companies will have to continue to evolve with it. They will, quite frankly, die if they don’t. It’s no longer a game of simply changing states, where you’re able to reach an “endpoint” and stay there for a while. It’s now a game of constant adaptation and continuous improvement.

As Edward sat with his client, they realized there’s no way to set people up to “cope” with something that’s constant—much less get out ahead of it and succeed. The only way teams and companies will succeed is if they are set up to actually embrace the change. As mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

Teaching people to surf

The job of leaders, then, is not to apologize for change but to foster the cultural transformation that will build enthusiasm for it. You must bring people on board—the surfboard, that is—and teach them how to ride the waves.

How can you accomplish that? Shift the narrative, communicate effectively, include your teams in the process, and make it fun.

Shift the narrative

For your teams to embrace change, they need to understand that it’s not a temporary nuisance they have to “get through” but rather a great opportunity to be creative at all times. Shifting the narrative in this way requires leaders to paint the right picture, one that focuses on the positive instead of the negative.

One historic 1988 campaign did this particularly well. Augusto Pinochet was the head of the military dictatorship that had taken over the Chilean government after staging a coup d’état in 1973 and creating a new constitution in 1980. The constitution established a “transition period” of eight years during which Pinochet would lead the state and which would end with a national plebiscite (or referendum) to determine whether or not he could continue as leader: “yes” for eight more years of Pinochet and the junta; “no” to reject him and hold elections. Both the “yes” and “no” campaigns were given free air time, but it quickly became evident that the “no” campaign was performing far better. While the “yes” campaign stoked fears of returning to pre-Pinochet chaos, the “no” campaign described a bright future, with a rainbow in its logo and a slogan proclaiming, “Chile, la alegría ya viene”—or “Chile, joy is coming!” The “no” campaign took 56% of the vote and won.

If you paint the picture of change as a military junta, it’s no wonder teams will resist it. But if you paint a picture where change is part of a future that enables growth, creativity, and possibility for your employees, you’re guaranteed to get more people excited. 

Communicate effectively

Just like with political campaigns, successfully shifting the narrative in a company takes repeated, effective communication. You want your teams to know what role change will play in the work of the organization moving forward as well as why it’s important—both the expectation and the reasoning behind it.

Alot of that can happen through internal messaging campaigns. Give all leaders and managers in your organization new, positive language about change that they can incorporate into their work with teams and direct reports. Make sure any written communications frame transformation in an inspirational tone. Incorporate excitement about change into the company’s physical spaces, too, with signage in the office or the online interfaces used by your teams.

You could even incorporate continuous change into your core values. What better way to communicate the importance of change—and energize and attract the right people as a result—than to put it front and center?  

Include your teams in the change

“Effective communication” does not, however, mean “crystal clear vision.” There’s a fallacy that leaders need to paint a perfectly precise and transparent vision of the future. But leaders don’t always have the answers. In fact, they often don’t, and the greatest leaders know that sometimes their best assets for coming up with new ideas are the brilliant, competent people they’ve hired. So, instead of hoarding all the imaginative problem-solving for those at the top, circle the wagons and get your teams involved so they can create your company’s vision for change.

Make it fun 

People more easily buy into something challenging when it’s also fun. To achieve this in the case of promoting change and agility, some companies have had great success introducing things like hackathons and intrapreneurship programs that put the focus on innovating one’s work but make it highly rewarding for employees. 

For example, most people are familiar with Google’s famous “20% Time” initiative, which gives employees 20% of their working time each week to focus on personal projects and ideas. They saw such great success by making innovation a priority (and a public one at that) that companies the world over copied Google’s initiative to try to achieve the same results. Whether you choose to do the same or create a different way to engage your teams, the point is to make change exciting and beneficial for your employees in a real way. That will create buy-in, which will yield results for both them as individuals and, of course, the company on the whole.

The beacons vs. the cautionary tales

Google isn’t the only company that’s shown how emphasizing continuous evolution and innovation leads to great success. Just look at streaming services—“change” is basically Netflix’s middle name. The company started as a disruptor in the movie rental market, putting out DVD rentals before DVDs were even popular. As demand for them grew, they moved to a subscription model, which was largely unheard-of in its industry at the time. When Netflix introduced its streaming service in 2007, they created a model that’s now ubiquitous among media companies and changed the ways we both consume and produce TV and film. The Netflix story could have ended in rental startup failure. But because the company continued to adapt to the changing needs of their customers as well as to continuously improving technology, they became the company to beat.

There are many examples beyond Netflix as well. JP Morgan and Bank of America have embraced change and, as a result, are leading the banking sector. Fender Guitars is another good example. Solely an instrument retailer for seven decades, a few years ago Fender’s leaders looked at the data and saw that a large percentage of their customer base were first-time buyers who bought an instrument once but quickly gave up playing. They realized that if that stayed the case, Fender’s pool of customers would get smaller and smaller as time wore on. So, they joined the software game and developed a user-friendly interface offering two programs through which customers could take virtual lessons and learn new songs: Fender Play and Fender Songs. They made their company relevant in the digital age and turned many would-be one-time purchasers into long-term customers (...and actual guitar players). 

Of course, not all companies have adapted so well. Kodak’s story is a classic cautionary tale leaders today would do well to remember. The film-processing company was once a household name, sitting pretty at the top of its industry (not to mention the stock market). In came the digital film and camera revolution and down they fell. The worst part is, Kodak facilitated its own demise. One of the company’s engineers actually invented the first digital camera in 1975, but company leadership sat on the technology (or buried it, rather) and turned a blind eye to the possibility it offered. The company’s leaders and culture were not set up to embrace change, so they didn’t. When the digital sea change came in full, they were sitting too far back on their heels to ever return to a winning position.

Adaptation by way of mutation

In many ways, Kodak’s leaders saw the 1975 invention as a mutation—one to be shamefully quashed and ignored. In the animal world, however, mutations are what leads to adaptation and evolution. Often, these mutations aren’t purposeful, coming from freak accidents that just happen to work better than the normal mode of operation. Part of the job of leaders is to keep an eye out for creative, effective mutations that could provide the basis for progressive adaptation. We simply don’t know what the future will hold, or what will always work best for our teams or our companies. By keeping our eyes peeled and our minds open, we allow for the constant potential of new mutations to show us where we should go next. 

Some changes are always going to be hard, especially those that come from bad news, like layoffs or demotions. But dealing with the consistent changes in technology and the world around us doesn’t have to be. Change is the new norm. More than that, it’s the goal. The sooner you and your teams can embrace change, the sooner you can forge your own path through it and reap the benefits.