Resilience & Focus
Change Adaptability
Engaging with a change on its actual merits instead of on how it feels to be changed.
Most workplace change isn't chosen by the people it happens to — a new process, a reorganization, a tool everyone now has to use. Adapting well means separating three things that arrive together and feel like one: whether the change is a good idea, what it costs you personally, and how badly it was introduced. Those can have different answers. A sound change communicated terribly is still sound; a change that costs you real expertise you spent years building is a genuine loss even if it's right for the organization. People who handle change well aren't the ones who feel nothing about it. They're the ones who can name the loss and still evaluate the thing.
Scenarios
A new tool replaces one you're expert in, and your expertise no longer counts for much. What would you do — argue the new tool is worse, or name the actual loss to yourself and separately assess whether the change is right?
You're rolling out a process change and the team is unenthusiastic. What would you do — work on the communication, or ask what it costs them specifically and find out whether they know something you don't?
Your team is quietly keeping the old spreadsheet alongside the new system. What would you do — insist they stop, or find out which things the new system genuinely can't do yet?
Takeaway
- Separate "is this a good change" from "was this handled well" and from "what does it cost me." All three can have different answers.
- Compare the new thing to the old thing as it actually was, complaints included, not as remembered.
- Name the loss when you're introducing change. Denying that it costs anything is what turns reasonable people into opponents.
- Look for the shadow system. If people are quietly running the old process, they usually have a reason worth hearing.
- Engage early on the changes that turn out to be real, even if most aren't. The cost of disengaging by default is that you shape none of them.