Managing Personal Change

Change management is the process of guiding change to fruition. There are a couple of schools of thought on approach to change management. While I like to draw from John Kotter, over my years in project management, technology implementations and process improvements, I’ve evolved to anchor on a few steps:?

1. Set the Vision - Map out the vision and destination
2. Empathize - humanize the change and acknowledge that it is a process. There will be good and bad things that come with it.?
3. Articulate the Stakeholder Impact - Consider the impacted parties, and clarify what’s in it for them, answer the question, “why is the vision going to be better for them?”?
4. Define the change - List out what you do today and how this change is going to come to life. What are the big differences that everyone will see, and what specifically will change day to day for each stakeholder?
5. Scope the work - Clearly communicate the milestones, deliverables and actions we’ll need to take along the way.?
6. Outline the plan - Clarify the high level roadmap to get there.?

This is all well and good when you’re in an organization, but when 2 key stakeholders are a 5 year old and a 2 year old, the adaptation to your audience takes on a whole new meaning.?

Vision: Change my circumstances so that my family and I have fluid access to a healthy and nature filled lifestyle.?

1. Mountain View on a daily basis
2. Walk to green-space
3. Walk to daily needs like dinner, school, etc.?
4. Work with purpose and leave a positive impact on the environment and our community

At face value, my husband and I latch onto this vision very easily. For my 5 year old, it’s a different story. He doesn’t even know what lifestyle means. This is where it is important to understand the stakeholder impact. The vision I paint for him is that we’ll work to recreate in Denver as much of the things he loves in Atlanta as possible: chess club, drama class, and playing outdoors. We’ll make ways for him to find new friends. Then I’ve been painting a picture of the changes that I think he’ll enjoy: Elk sightings at school, learning to bike, skiing, indoor pools open all year with slides.?

Emphasize: Beyond the vision, I empathize with my son that there are things we will miss. There are some real moments of doubt and questioning that come with this journey.?

• What if no one wants to hire me? Am I valuable??
• I barely know how to emotionally regulate, how am I supposed to teach this small human how to do it while routine is non-existant??
• Will we find a house in the right neighborhood with as good a school as the one our child currently attends?
• Will Halloween trick or treating be as good as it was in my current neighborhood? #priorities
• Will I make friends? Will my children make friends??
• Will my child ever stop peeing in public places? Is potty training a real thing that happens to children or do they just wet themselves for ever and go to college in a diaper?…

How do I stay in a growth mindset and keep moving forward? Accept that doubt is normal. Remind myself that change is complicated emotionally and logistically. Keep the end vision in mind.?

Stakeholder impact: First stakeholder, me; I am doing this to take charge of my life. I must admit, to list out what’s in it for me makes me uncomfortable and feel a bit vulnerable. I’m not used to putting myself first and feeling so sure about what I want; Here goes nothing:

• Opportunity to find a job where I feel valued and aligns with what gives me energy each day, to making a positive impact on the environment and my community.?
• Opportunity to spend more time with my growing toddler and walk home every day with my kindergartener + save a ton of money each month during this time of uncertainty.
• Opportunity to find a new life in Denver/Golden, Co that is anchored in the outdoor activities that I love.?
• Opportunity to send my toddler to what seems like an amazing preschool that also requires him to be potty trained before beginning.?

Beyond myself, what’s in it for my kids and my husband? Are they the same? Generally I would say that my husband and I arrived at these benefits together. However, for my 5year old, these positive outcomes feel so foreign. He doesn’t quite understand what moving means. He doesn’t understand if we‘re going to bring all of our toys, or if we bring our furniture? It’s fair, because when we go on a trip we do not bring these things. He hasn’t built a love of the mountains in the same way my husband and I have, and he doesn’t understand how lucky he will be to grow up with them out his window. So, I share with him that there will be things I miss about Atlanta and there are things I am super excited about for Colorado. Both things can be true. I also keep mentioning potential elk sightings at his school, after school clubs and indoor pools with 2 story slides.?

Define the change: So what exactly will change? Almost everything. Our day to day commute to schools, our friend group, our weekend activities, the frequency we see certain family, and my job. However, as part of this process we prioritized aspects of our life that we didn’t want to change drastically and these priorities made it into the vision. Today we walk to the library, dinner and school on a regular basis. We don’t want that to change. Adding that to the vision keeps us grounded on where we’re able to concede and what change is too much.

Scope the work: We set a budget based on anticipated sale of the house. We picked an ideal timeline that accommodated for kindergarten, family reunion and childcare options.We picked a moving company and the moving date before we even listed the house. Knowing all these anchor points made it easier to negotiate for what we needed.? So far, We’ve cleared a lot of our milestone. I believe that because we’ve been clear from the beginning on our non-negotiable items, things are falling into place.?

So where did we start??By understanding our priorities

1. Childcare was number one - Our working life depends on childcare, and since there’s not universal childcare in this country we have to get on waitlists, find out camp registration dates and get into the digital lines to secure spots. All this with no Denver address, so we just crossed our fingers and hoped we could find a house.?
2. Neighborhoods were a close second - What neighborhoods could we live in that would give us the vision we desired? Were all factors equally important? Turns out the view is slightly more important than the others.?
3. Non-negotiable time - We can’t move until after Kindergarten is over, and we need to be able to attend the Family reunion in June. With those anchor points In the timeline, we backed into milestones with realtors etc.

Outline the plan: WIth the anchor points in mind, we had clear milestones from which the realtor could work towards. We secured summer camps in Atlanta and Denver accordingly and can keep reminding our 5 year old of the plan to help him process this more easily. While deadlines may shift, we were able to prioritize our to do lists against each major milestone. For example:?

1. By list date: Need as much out of the house for staging purposes?
2. By closing/move date: Need easy access to the clothes we’ll be taking but other than that need all things packed.?
3. By June 24th we need to be in Texas for a family reunion
4. By July 10th we need to be in Colorado so Owen can start Summer camps & we need all major renovations done so we can move into new house.
5. By August 1st: We need full time childcare so mama can get a job

We are still in the middle of this change, but the vision has helped me keep focused. We are not running away from our current lifestyle, but we’re intentionally taking control of what we want our day to day to be like. We are very lucky to have this opportunity, and it is scary. When I falter, my husband grounds me back with the vision. When I can’t make a decision, I bring the options back to the vision and see how well they fit the criteria. When my son says he doesn’t want to move, I acknowledge his feelings and try to comfort him with the vision of our new life to come.?

Change is hard and emotional. Leaning on change management practices has helped me stay the course. What has helped you??