For Lesson 1, we were all asked to respond to the following questions:
How do you feel about change in organizational settings? Why do you feel as you do?
I’m naturally a person that can “roll with the punches”. I tend to look at any kind of change as an opportunity to learn something new and grow. I am, of course, not naïve to the fact that those natural feelings aren’t shared by everyone. In my previous role, I was the HR Manager for field operations in the Mid Atlantic Area. I supported approximately 800 associates. I was the only HR Manager for this group, and therefore, I had full control over the HR initiatives that would be implemented. Most of the time, these were initiatives that were being worked on (at a much larger scale) at our Corporate facility, and therefore they were moving at the pace of glaciers. A New Associate Onboarding process was one good example of this. Well, I didn’t want to wait around for these to be implemented because we were feeling the pain NOW, and needed to implement certain processes or projects to address these needs. My thoughts about implementing these “changes”….well, to be honest, I don’t think that I really gave much thought to how to manage my associates through these changes. We all moved at an extremely fast pace and didn’t have the luxury to put together a change management strategy. Implementing changes seemed to be easy. However, I now realize that “I didn’t know what I didn’t know…”
Two years ago, I was assigned an opportunity to take on the role of Corporate HR Manager, with specific responsibilities in driving larger-scale initiatives (i.e. the Organizational New Associate Onboarding Process) throughout the entire Organization. These initiatives have impact on tens of thousands of associates (vs. my 800 in the Mid Atlantic). Let’s just say that my eyes have been wide open with respect to managing change since I’ve had the privilege of being in this role. Although my inclination at first was to continue to drive hard and fast with some of these initiatives, I have come to respect just how delicate change management needs to be handled at times. My feelings about “change” in organizational settings primarily have to do with the amount of time a well-executed initiative requires. This new-found respect for time has forced me to ask more questions, expand project timelines when needed (a personal struggle of mine), and make sure that all the right players are well-involved from inception through execution and beyond.