Creating Change for You: It's Personal!

People have asked me a lot of questions about an upcoming change taking place in my life (I’m moving to a new Province for a new job!).  Their line of questions got me thinking about whether huge life changes and personal transitions could be facilitated using a change management process.  

Subsequent to accepting this new position, and because of the types of questions I received as a result of my decision, I did a bit of investigating and found tons of well-researched articles offered up to guide business professionals contemplating job/life changes.  In these articles, I noticed that rather than focusing on one or two aspects of transition, most of the articles offered a very wide range of topics for the would-be job seeker.  This is likely done intentionally so the articles will appeal to a broad audience with a wide range of reasons for considering a transition.  So, with this in mind and getting back to my change management perspective on this level of personal and professional change, my first question is:  would you take a scatter gun approach to any other change initiative in the workplace? Answer:  No!  So why take that route for your own career and life? 

In a change management process, one would start by taking focus and looking at the facts – plain and simple.  As a professional, this translates into looking at your current work and life situation as objectively as possible and doing some visioning for yourself as to how you would like to see yourself in the future – maybe five years down the road (hint:  work and life considerations do go hand in hand – think about it!).  Never mind if your friends and family don’t immediately buy into your vision.  What’s important is that you do and since you’re leading the change, you’ll have to realize early on that friends, family and colleagues may resist the notion of change, especially at first.  And as the lead in this very important journey, you’ll have to manage the difficulty others have in the same way you would in other change progression.

So if you’re contemplating a change for yourself, I’d encourage you to go ahead and read all those job transition articles – there are plenty of them out there!  But remember that in a typical change management practice you wouldn’t approach any initiative without first examining where you are and visioning where you want to be.  As with all circumstances when you’re considering change, there are pros and cons to staying with the status quo, so do the exercise – really!  When in doubt, remember the most important voice: that of the customer. And in this case, you’re the customer.

Take care, and have fun thinking about where you’d like to be in the next few years, and do small or large things everyday to bring you closer to your goals.  Wasn’t it Gandhi who said “…be the change”?