Five Ways to Lead in an Era of Constant Change

“Let’s acknowledge that change is hard. People naturally resist change, especially when it’s imposed on them. But there are things that organizations do that make change even harder and more exhausting for people than it needs to be. First of all, leaders often wait too long to act. As a result, everything is happening in crisis mode. Which, of course, tends to be exhausting. Or, given the urgency, what they’ll do is they’ll just focus on the short-term results, but that doesn’t give any hope for the future. Or they’ll just take a superficial, one-off approach, hoping that they can return back to business as usual as soon as the crisis is over.”  – Jim Hemerling 

Change is feared by many. The thought of it causes stress and fear of the unknown. This is why it’s extremely important for organizations to carefully choose how they approach and frame change to their employees. There is a right and a wrong way to approach change.

In this TED Talk, 5 Ways To Lead In An Era Of Constant Change, organizational change expert Jim Hemerling discusses 5 imperatives for making company reorganization an empowering and energizing task:

1. Inspire through purpose – the transformation needs to connect with a deeper sense of purpose.
2. Go all in.
3. Enable people with the capabilities that they need to succeed during the transformation and beyond.
4. Instill a culture of continuous learning.
5. A leader needs to have a vision, a clear road map with milestones, and then you need to hold people accountable for results.

“In the era of ‘always-on’ transformation, organizations are always going to be transforming. But doing so does not have to be exhausting. We owe it to ourselves, to our organizations and to society to boldly transform our approach to transformation. To do that, we need to start putting people first,” adds Hemerling.

Learn more about how to lead during change: