| Forward I have always been interested in the ways people change and grow to meet life's challenges. From the time I began teaching (1970) and counseling (1973), that interest has focused on helping individuals develop resilience and competence in work and success as a person in an increasingly complex world. After I obtained a second masters degree in business (1979), my work focused almost exclusively on the world of work, where helping individuals develop competencies and attitudes for success also meant helping the organization itself to survive and thrive. This dual perspective of helping both individuals and organizations has become my life's work. It has continued to evolve over the decades along with the world of work. In response to those ongoing changes those of us in the developmental fields (both organizational development and personal transformation and development) continue to focus on how best to develop organizations—as well as leaders and staff—who have the capability to create more effective and efficient organizations to cope with increased competition and evolving global markets. The impetus to write this book came about after the early dust had settled after the tragedy of 9/11. There was a sense that this unique event would be responsible for a deeper shift in individuals' thinking and responding to change. Inevitably, it seemed to me, these shifts in thinking would begin to influence the way people behave and cope with both disaster and other less tragic but not necessarily less individually traumatic events at their places of work. After more than 30 years of working in organizations, it has become clear to some of us in the change management business that people were already evolving their thinking and attitudes toward work and their lives more broadly. Could 9/11 and its accompanying cultural changes tip the scales and hasten even broader changes in people's thinking and behavior that would influence their emotional intelligence, behavior, and adaptation to change at work? Are people's evolutions in perceptions and thinking being considered by organizations as they embrace needed change? For a long time, many in the human resource development field have felt that the methods and approaches organizations employ to create and foster change, as well as the ways management deals with people and their livelihoods, were increasingly outdated. If for no other reason than that change initiatives often failed, we and others continue to believe that there needs to be continued attention not just to the need for change, but the way we organize or develop change. In Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations, Richard Axelrod's critical work on changing the change paradigm introduced to a broader audience a new approach to change that at its core creates a wider circle of engagement and a more expansive method of change management. This work was an important part of the change literature, bringing to public awareness that the need for people to be adaptive and flexible extended to their organizations. The need then for individuals to be more open to change and more mature in their thinking is a given if unstated assumption of personal and organizational change. My colleague, Dr. Thanos Patelis, and I believe that this was a missing piece in the current literature of personal and organizational change. Simply put, the need for people to be open to change appears to be a given, but we did not believe we had much data on how, if at all, individuals were evolving and shifting their perceptions about personal or organizational change. Without this data, people and organizations were left to make assumptions about attitudes and beliefs that might be outdated or incorrect. Although managers and leaders might think they know that folks don't like change, their knowledge of individuals' actual feelings and actions related to change were not, and are not, easily accessible. Since the mid-90s, considerable work has focused on leaders and how they need to evolve to meet the needs of change and globalization. I have been involved in some of this movement. We know that competency models developed in the 70s and 80s were essentially incomplete as we faced the 90s and the early years of the 21st century. This updating of leadership models is a positive development in our field and is creating new and emerging approaches that reach beyond the good efforts of the previous decades. Managers and leaders remain the main means of culture-forming in organizations as well as the producers of bottom-line success or failure of any organization. Their influence on how organizations operate and facilitate change cannot be overestimated. There has also been considerable focus on strategies of change and transformation which help shed light on approaches that work more effectively than others to create enduring organizations of value. Books like Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don't (Collins, 2001) and What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success (Joyce, Nohria, 2003) discuss research that has provided approaches and strategies that enable organizations to meet the challenges of increased globalization. Complexity theory and science also entered the mainstream of business thought as sophisticated thinkers in organizations began to fathom the importance of massive shifts and nonlinear change that affect how change occurs. But, as noted above, less attention has been paid to the shifting thinking patterns, developmental levels, and abilities to manage and deal with change of all staff. Dr. Patelis and I believe that this would be both an interesting and highly relevant area of inquiry. If, in fact, people at work were more or less open in their thinking regarding change, this information would support leaders who are attempting to create greater change and transformation. Such an inquiry would also help practitioners in the field who work with strategy approaches requiring involvement of all staff to make progress. Finally, it helps organizations' human resource strategies and approaches in areas as diverse as selection, recruitment, development, and reward, which need to consider the evolving nature of worker perceptions. The point of writing the book was to reflect upon where people "are" in their thinking and openness to dealing with change, as well as assess their emotional intelligence as a means to implement appropriate behaviors for organizational and personal change and success. Secondly, this book would suggest ways that might be more helpful in working within organizations to create the processes and approaches to work, livelihood, and success that bring an organization to life and sustains its energy in ongoing and relentlessly changing times. The recommendations made would evolve from the date we gathered indicating what workers are able and willing to do based on where they "are." For while best practices may suggest one or another strategy, we wanted to know for sure what people were capable of given our research before we recommended any specific actions. Change Ahead is a melding of two phases of research designed to explore the evolving thinking and emotional maturity and intelligence of people who work in organizations. The first piece is broad and includes a survey that sought a large diverse population of people in different age groups and parts of the country and the world who could share with us their thinking about change and behavior post-9/11. A series of interviews were also conducted to attain more in-depth insight into how people's lives changed after this tragedy. The second part of the research was conducted at organizations where we tried to assess where people were in their work lives by understanding the specific conditions that existed in these organizations, and to consider people's emotional intelligence and reactions to change given those conditions. We grounded
both pieces in an overview of the current "Big Picture" of
where the world is and where the world of work is. We felt this grounding
and knowledge would provide a broad context upon which to see and understand
the research data. In a sense, it is the broader framework which has set
the stage and allowed for the current thinking and attitudes of the employees
today. Finally, my co-author and I collaborated to develop and share lessons learned that we thought would be broadly helpful moving forward. It is our profound hope that this discussion of the changing workforce will bring about more research, thought, and reflection among practitioners of organizational and personal change. It is also our hope that it will add to our field's understanding of shifting perceptions and how important it is to consider these when working in organizations. Finally, we hope ChangeAhead enlightens the reader in their awareness of how they or others they know and work with may have changed personally post-9/11 (and sadly now post 7/7/05, and whether that change is consistent with some of our considered observations and analysis. Pat Gill
Webber
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