I help change happen and sometimes people get hurt

Maggie M
Maggie M
Jul 22, 2017 · 4 min read

The work I choose to do is helping leaders of organisations find ways to help solve today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. I’ve spent many years on many different sizes and scales of challenges. And I’ve spent many many hours reading, researching, attending training courses and conferences so I can do my work as well as I possibly can. And yet I know people still get hurt. It’s not a physical hurt. It’s an emotional or existential hurt.

When I work with small teams I feel able to support each person as they navigate their way through their responses to each change. I can use and share my own phenomenology and the gestalt cycle of change. I can coach and mentor. I can make them a cup of tea or go for a walk with them. I’m right alongside them as they think through how they’re feeling and what they need now.

But when I’m dealing with changes that involve hundreds or thousands of people I can’t do this. I can’t be there for each person. And I become aware of people starting to grumble and some people choosing to move to jobs away from the change. I convince myself these are positive responses to the changes. If people are grumbling to each other they are creating their own support network aren’t they? If people are moving on then the old adage of ‘change the people or change the people’ is right isn’t it? The new ways of working won’t suit everyone so it’s natural some people will leave and that’s ok isn’t it? As ever there is a spectrum to people grumbling and leaving, some of it is normal. Some of it isn’t. And I’m becoming more aware of the longer term existential impact the changes in organisations are having on people. The people who carry on quietly without grumbling, who continue to do a great job despite everything.

Many people are tired. They’re being asked to buy into visions and values that aren’t the reality at the interpersonal level. They’re being asked to work harder and harder often without ever achieving any satisfaction as the goals change or the next thing to do becomes urgent before they’ve finished what they’re currently doing. They’re being asked to prove their worth again and again. They’re being asked to apply for their own jobs. they’re being asked to do more with less to the point of breaking.

And how do I know this is having an existential impact? It’s in the small things like the fridge being full of individual pints of milk when people used to share milk.

It’s in people not saying hello to each other at the start of the day and goodbye at the end.

It’s in the counting down the days until retirement.

Is there a better way?

I read Frederic Laloux’s work on re-inventing organisations and hear that it works in some organisations and not in others. Are organisations like the book Animal Farm by George Orwell where the commandment of “All animlas are equal” was gradually changed to “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”? Is this how most organisations will always be?

And I’m reminded of the work of Dr Clare Graves and his Spiral Dynamics model. Is Captialism keeping us in Graves first tier? What is the tipping point to move to the second tier?

I believe organisational transformations will cause less harm than they do today when there are more people with eco-centric motivation and/or awareness of Grave’s second tier ways of being. When there are more people working in a Relational way.

Until then, my ongoing self questioning is…

“Do I keep working with organisations and do the best I can to minimise the hurt I cause to people, or do I look to work for organisations that are ready to work in less harmful ways, or do I withdraw from this sort of work altogether?”

Maybe I’m just in a parallel process with my own pint of milk and I’m wondering if anyone wants to share it with me?

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