Are We There Yet?

I remember sitting in my Sociology courses, listening to my professors telling tales of the profound, history-making discoveries by renowned Anthropologists. <sigh> Dream life.

One women in particular captivated my young feminist attention – Margaret Mead. I won’t delight you with the details of her work, just know I wanted to BE her. Badly. Traveling the world, studying and shining light on social norms for women around the globe. No judgement. Ok, maybe some.

So off I went to earn my Doctorate and become famous. The end.

Wait. No. That didn’t happen. Life happened.

Fast forward to a few years ago, on a particularly long road trip, I was reflecting on Young Me’s career goals and feeling a bit disappointed in myself. Then it hit me – I AM her. Sort of. While not in Samoa, I do have a great career in Organizational Change Management, enjoy travel just for the love of travel and try to make an impact at the micro-level. Not too shabby.

I had forgotten about this little epiphany until my most recent road trip. Happily motoring along in my Class C, my brain began wondering how RV living, which so many of us are doing, is impacting our life satisfaction. So as soon as I set up my site, I set to setting up a survey. I hope to get enough participation to get published. Ah, fame at last.

What in the world does this have to do with change management? Effective change management is not talking to people, it’s talking with people. A good change management plan includes a feedback mechanism and a plan for communicating the feedback and a plan for reacting to the feedback.

• Feedback: Is XYZ working flawlessly? What would make it work better?
• Communication: Here’s what we heard. Here’s how we plan to improve it.

Like Margaret, when you walk into a culture, you observe, ask, listen, clarify. And sorry, your organization is a culture. HR is a culture in your culture. HR management is a culture within the HR culture within the culture of your organization. Times as many unique stakeholder groups you can identify. It’s not as overwhelming as it sounds and Margaret, er, I can help.

““Our secret weapon for building the best culture is open and honest feedback.”

– Gina Lau, HelloSign

Shannon Vasko is a natural-born planner with a passion for strategy and integrated communications. AI was not used for content creation. © MI Compass Services.