The change management curve was initially designed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. This happened in 1969 to demonstrate how different people deal with the situation of terminal illness. These days, this same curve is used for crisis, which every one of us experiences in one way or another. This model can therefore used to gauge changes and its effect on people in an organizational change management.
Just as any idea or models, this particular curve has its own debaters and challengers, but it’s a respectable program to use in understanding where individuals are on their roadmap through change. As a result, this insight can truly help managers tailor effective communication and approaches to those people dealing with the management change, helping them through their transition effectively.
Tailor Support and Diagnose the Phases
Dealing with change as an individual, the duration it takes to go through the change management model successfully depends on that person. A few can easily go through within the shortest time possible while others can take more than two years to be successful. The main challenge is to assist bring different people through their own change curve by fully understanding the phase they belong to and what kind of support tools they require to successfully transition through as well as embrace new changes.
The Change Management Curve – The General Phases
Stage 1. Denial
Denial is the first phase of this curve and this happens once the information about the change ideals has been received, the first natural reaction among many people is to deny the essence of change and assume that isn’t happening. Literary, some of the typical words or phrases used at this stage include, it wouldn’t work, or it has been tried before, why to us and many other comments. It’s an ideal thing to focus on increasing face-to-face communication and also addressing some crucial issues in the organization.
Stage 2. Anger
After people learn that the new changes in an organization aren’t going away anyway, the anger phase is the next step towards this change. During this time, individuals affected regularly cannot see a better way out of that situation, hence resorting to bitterness and anger. In order to overcome this, it’s important to involve in any informal channels and try to use several different forms of communications. Give people enough time to fully understand the new management change while keeping all communication channels wide open.
Stage 3. Exploration
To maintain the commitment and determination to working with people, facilitating, and encouraging them through the management change model, eventually it will become obvious that the new change is here to stay. Thus, at this time, individuals will try to compromise a better and favorable result of the change. To avoid this, always communicate timelines effectively for the project by encouraging involvement and allow total visibility to the people as to what is exactly needed to be done.
Stage 4. Acceptance
This is actually the last phase in a change curve. Here, people have successfully come all through the complete change curve. The people involved fully understand the main idea for change and learning to adopt new management environment. People get fully involved in the change and directly dealing with it.
Conclusively, the change management curve is actually a roadmap to achieving certain goals. The change should positively affect the whole organization rather than discouraging and sabotaging the people within it.
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WalkMe Team
WalkMe spearheaded the Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) for associations to use the maximum capacity of their advanced resources. Utilizing man-made consciousness, AI, and context-oriented direction, WalkMe adds a powerful UI layer to raise the computerized proficiency, everything being equal.