Change is an Inside Job

As I embark on a new beautiful journey with The Change Leadership Accelerator course, I am reminded of change models. How interesting it is to see the ADKAR and the Kubler-Ross models, as I look at my notes and see them side by side. I see how important it is to take both models into consideration when going through or anticipating change, as they give us different information. The first is about what people need to 'have' and the second is the process people may go through. What fascinates me about this field (read: about life), and it shows up again here, is that it's all internal.

The ADKAR model stands for A: awareness, D: desire, K: knowledge, A: ability and R: reinforcement. These are all things that can be forced on us but as soon as they are, they are no longer internal and so the change, you may have guessed, is unsustainable.

For example, we can all be given lectures and talks about how earthshaking the climate crisis is (pun intended) but if there is no true awareness, this information will stay on surface level. It wont sink in deep into the psyche. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, awareness is: ''the quality or state of being?aware?:?knowledge and understanding that something is happening or exists''. So unless we're truly open and understand the climate crisis is happening with all its consequences, we are not really aware. If we are not really aware, it doesn't really affect us internally, we don't think about it, we don't adjust our behavior in its consideration, it just doesn't exist for us. We wont change anything in our daily life. Change (on our end) wont take place, because inside of us, nothing has changed.

The Kubler-Ross model on the other hand, informs us of the stages of grief loss may bring upon us. And yes, loss is what most humans feel when going through change. This model says that we may go through shock, denial, frustration and depression before we start being open to experiment, learn how to work with the new reality and maybe even feel renewed by the change. I'm assuming that it is clear how these are all internal stages even though the change is external.

This stuff really grabs my attention. I mean when you think that everything around us is changing constantly and yet we can be on a totally different wavelength if we are just not paying attention. This can be for or against us. I mean maybe it's a good thing that we are not aware of every new restaurant that opens its doors, I can't even imagine what the awareness of all the delicious menus would do to my health. It's a silly example but it is just to illustrate that there is often a reason we are not paying attention to something. Even if it seems important to most people. It is our internal energy-saving mode.

So what... well, maybe you're going through personal or organizational change and you find yourself not motivated to jump on the train of change even though you know you have to for X reason. That's when knowing about these models can be truly helpful and most importantly, knowing that it's all internal, will help you adjust your lens to how you look at the next change project in your life. Knowing that your are not motivated is a huge piece of awareness itself, then knowing why and what to do about it is yet another piece to complete the puzzle of effortless change.

So why.... because I really am fascinated by your psyche, ok maybe that's weird, I'm fascinated by the human psyche, especially our ability to transform ourselves and those around us. That's my fuel. What is yours?