Change is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
See what I did there ;)
It may shock folks (my husband, friends and family, perhaps not) that I have a natural aversion to change and the unexpected. IKR! MOI?! It's true, I have had to work pretty hard to lean in.
My son resists change too. Routines, transitions, anything that disrupts what he knows. Every time I watch him dig his heels in about something, I see myself. Not everyone is born adaptable. Some of us have to learn and practise.
So let's talk about AI (obviously).
Honestly; I was anti for a while. Not broadcast-y or evangelically anti, but sceptical in the way you are about things that feel like they're being sold to you way too hard. You know, when you find yourself on a call navigating another presumptive close though you've already politely declined 20 of them. The relentless push was giving me the ick, for sure. The use cases felt thin. I used it and it gave me a wrong answer. And once again. It gave me another one. Stupid AI!, I thought, and went back to doing things the way I'd always done them.
But the thing about this tech is that what it couldn't do on a Tuesday, it could often do by Friday. The version I'd dismissed was purely a moment in time. By the time I came back to the table, the table had moved and was now a fully kitted workstation with LED backlights and a massage chair. That's part of what makes the tech so disorienting to keep pace with, and part of why early scepticism ages badly and you need to reconsider. The thing you wrote off six months ago isn't the thing that exists now.
I kinda figured the change was coming regardless. I couldn't control that. What I could control was how I navigated it.
The discomfort
More recently and quite uncomfortably. I'm the one promoting change. Me.
I’m just a girl, standing in front of people, asking them to do things differently.🌹
I don’t do this because I wanted to randomly shake things up and set fire to the rain. I do it because the world around us had already changed. Higher expectations. Fewer resources. Faster everything. The change is here.
So, me being me, I collected some insight on what was broken, and built something to fix it. But the feedback that came back wasn't the feedback I'd been expecting. My first reaction? Wait - I was trying to help!
Why didn’t I get great feedback? It's simple. The problem I'd solved as a builder, I simply hadn't solved as a leader. I'd been so focused on closing the gap, I hadn't spent enough time with the people standing in it. Cue angst. I know better than this. Processes serve the people, right?
What I'm (re)learning about change
Some reminders for myself:
Change isn't a solution you deliver. It's a conversation you host. The fastest route to something that lasts goes through more people than feels efficient, achievable or even warranted at the time. Simply put, collecting issues and feedback, then solving them offline does not equal buy-in.
Tiredness in the room isn't personal. People aren't necessarily worn out by your idea to improve. They're worn out by the seventeen other things landing at the same time in a world that has been relentlessly changing for years. Expect energy you haven't earned and you'll mistake the fatigue for resistance.
Show the other side. The smallest demo will drive influence and inspiration, because it's the one people can picture themselves doing.
We earn the right to ask for change by having been on the other side of it. All of these experiences are useful to to reinforce now.
Underneath all of it
This is a journey I’m on. Ultimately, I'd rather be the person practising influencing positive change, getting knocked back, and getting better at it (obviously), than the one who never tried to move anything forward at all. Despite my natural tendencies.
Change is all part of the journey. The point of it all is staying open, curious, and not camping out too long when you see unknown terrain. They say there's no such thing as bad weather, just a bad choice of clothing. The suffering, as it turns out, is optional.
