The real-life roller coaster of the change curve

One of my favourite and most used tools for focusing on transformation is the change curve. This tool is invaluable in helping people understand their emotions when going through the different stages of change. It helps people to realise that change is a process and it is natural to feel anxious when a change is initially announced and that these emotions will at some point, be a thing of the past and a new, even better reality will be in place.

Change can be like a roller coaster, sometimes you are in a downward spiral but at some point, you’ll be going up again. And so it goes on…

Origins

The change curve originated from a model developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (a Swiss psychiatrist) in the 1960’s. Kubler Ross proposed that terminally ill patients would typically go through 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. She further proposed that this model would be applicable to other dramatic life changing situations.

The change curve has since been further developed and it is deployed in many types of situation. It is extremely effective in supporting business transformation.

The 5 stages

I have explained the key stages of the change curve and how they can be approached below. The stages I have used vary from the original Kubler Ross ones, as they are focused on business transformation rather than grief, however, the principle is broadly the same.

The Change Curve

Stage 1. Shock

In the first stage: ‘shock’ it is perfectly natural to have strong negative emotion towards the change. This can impact the persons emotional wellbeing and productivity.

When planning and preparing for a change, it is essential that we take the necessary actions to ensure that people fully understand how the change will affect them and to mitigate against any potentially negative actions.

Such things as populating a stakeholder engagement matrix and change impact assessment and having robust training and communications plans in place can help you to ensure that you have thoroughly thought through and prepared for how a change is going to impact all affected stakeholders.

Shock can be minimised by ensuring that people are fully informed of the change in a simple, clear and easy to understand format. In its simplest form, I often base a communications plan around the 5W1H: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

It is important that you help stakeholders realise that fear of change is a natural thing. They need to fully understand how things will be different when the change is implemented. Most importantly, what will they need to do differently, start or stop doing?

Stage 2. Denial

After the initial shock, people can also experience denial. This is the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” sentiment. People may try to convince themselves that the change has less impact than it really has or may not even happen. At this stage, it is essential that the person facilitating the change ensures that communication is continual.

There needs to be clear consistent messages and plenty of reassurance. The communication, however, should not just come from change facilitators but also sponsors and business leads.

Stage 3. Anger

When entering the anger stage, it is natural to feel resentment to the change and even to the organisation for making the change. It is natural for people to experience the emotion of being suddenly in freefall. Performance drops as people focus on how the change is going to affect them with a negative perception of the future. In this stage, it is essential that the people implementing the change provide plenty of reassurance to all affected stakeholders.

It is also essential that there is an acknowledgement across the board that people are likely to feel negative for a certain time when going through change and the best thing we can do is provide support and regular and consistent information and to do our best to get people to focus on the benefits of the future state, whilst recognising that emotionally, they are not likely to be accepting of that yet.

Stage 4. Depression

This is the lowest point of the curve. This is where the anger starts to wear off and people recognise that the change is definitely happening. At this point, performance is impacted the most. People may not feel angry about the change anymore but often feel resistant and frustrated about what is going to be implemented.

It is really important to ensure that people do not feel isolated in their feelings. As before; regular, clear, consistent communication is essential to help people through this stage.

Stage 5. Acceptance and Sustainment

After the emotions of depression have started to go, people tend to experience a moment where they start to look positively about the change. They start to accept that the future state is not such a bad place to be. Gradually, they see more and more positives and performance improves. People become more optimistic.

It is important for change facilitators to continue effective communication through this stage and to reinforce positive messages and viewpoints, so that performance and moral improvements are sustained.

Once people have moved through acceptance, they become far more positive about the change and performance levels eventually reach at least as good as before the change but hopefully even better. This is the point of sustainment. This is when people are fully accepting of the change and it’s become the new way of operating.

Key points

Some people may not experience all of the above stages of change and some may go through a stage such as denial or anger and move forward through the curve only to return to these emotions.

It is also important to note that some people move through the stages much faster than others. Even after an implementation, some people could still be in anger and denial, whilst others may have completed all of the stages prior to this.

When tacking change, it is also important to recognise that some people will feel differently about the proposed changes to others. You may, therefore, have to adapt your leadership or coaching style to suit different groups of people.

Summary

So the above hopefully shows she real-life roller coaster of the change curve. The tool can be used to effectively plan and prepare for change and in coaching people whilst they are going through transformation. It is also really beneficial for change facilitators, sponsors, business leads and all other stakeholders to have an understanding of the model.

It is, however, just one of many useful tools and techniques that can be used to support the delivery of robust business change but certainly a key one to have in your change tool-kit.

I hope that this has been an interesting read. Please feel free to contact me to discuss how I can help you approach change.