2017 - the Hangover of Changes in 2016

2017, in many ways is going to be the hangover of the heady cocktail of radical changes we created in in 2016. Changes that were tumultuous for people around the world and perhaps a little more difficult for some of the major countries ; UK because of Brexit and a result its impact on Europe, USA because of the Presidential elections, Syria because of the refugee crisis that it produced and which affected the countries around them in Europe, and India because of Demonetisation to cite a few examples.

But the change that started in 2016 is in many ways is really going to play out in 2017, because most of the changes had not yet settled down. Both, India's Demonetisation and the US Presidential elections happened at the fag end of the previous year, leaving the future open for the next year. And while t Britain voted for Brexit in July of 2016, the actual tearing away from the European Union is a process that would really progress only in the first half of 2017.

Well its almost human nature to resist change. We get comfortable with what we are doing. We are afraid of something new that can disturb that comfort. But often we don't really understand why the change has happened or proposed by the government or our own organisations. We resist change even at a personal level.

Take the Indian Demonetisation for example. If everyone is used to a cash economy where most of the population pays in cash, wouldn't they resist the change to e-payments?

Britain joined the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973, along with Denmark and Ireland. So imagine that Brexit referendum was trying to break away from an arrangement that was 43 years old. Strangely no referendum was held when Britain agreed to an accession treaty on 22 January 1972 together with the EEC states, Denmark, and Ireland, or when the European Communities Act 1972 went through the legislative process. But a referendum unfortunately decided the break-away from the European Union.

No Presidential election in the recent history of the US has created so much divisiveness and disintegration as the recent one. With Trump ready to take over on January 20, 2017 the tension of the transition has only increased. And so has the people's opposition. Imagine that even a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has resigned over its plan to sing at the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, and more than 22,000 people have signed a petition opposing the choir's participation.

But why did we show so much resistance to some of those changes?

Control

Any change means we lose control. We are always masters of the current situation, and a new situation means that we may not be good at handling it.

Uncertainty

Change often feels like walking off a cliff blindfolded, and that is one of the reasons people will reject it. People will often prefer to remain in misery than to head toward an unknown. As the saying goes, “Better the known devil than the unknown”.

Habit 

Change is meant to bring something different, but we are not quite sure how different. Unfortunately we are creatures of habit. Routines go on auto-pilot, and change jolts us into consciousness, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. 

More work and effort

Any adjustment to radical change means more work and effort. One of the reasons why everyone was writing the epitaph on the Indian demonetisation is because it meant trouble and discomfort. Notably people having to stand in long queues to draw money from ATMs.

Chart by Torben Rick

But in many ways the worst of the changes in 2016 seem to be over. If we are to go by Torben Ricks chart of the stages that we go through while adapting to change, then we may have reached the bottom of the curve in 2016. In other words we may have well moved from Denial, Anger, Confusion to Depression and Crisis.

2017 hopefully we will go through the stages of Acceptance and a New Confidence. We need to take recourse to the famous words of Socrates when he said 'Change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building the new'.

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