My personal attitude towards change

By Brian Kreissl

Without going into too many details just yet, my team and I are going through some fairly major changes right now that will see me move on to a new role within the organization early next year.

However, I will still be doing the same type of work relating to human resources products and services. And I am very happy to be continuing this blog.

While I am going to miss my current job — which I’ve held now for seven years — I have felt like it was time for a change for a while now. Even though my role was pretty much a perfect fit for me when I was hired, people continue to grow, develop and change throughout their careers.

However, I don’t necessarily believe every aspect of the change will be an improvement over my current situation. Therefore, I suppose you could say I am somewhat resistant to the change in a way (although I do understand the need for the change).

Welcoming, embracing change

Having said that, I generally view myself as being someone who welcomes and embraces change. I often look for change just for the sake of change. I’m actually the type of person who gets bored when things stay the same for too long.

For that reason, I’m actually a bit surprised I have stayed in the same role for seven years now. That’s not to say I’m a “job hopper,” but I have generally moved on to a new role every couple of years throughout my career, even if it just meant moving to another position internally.

That long period of stability also coincided with a period in my life where I felt like very little changed in my personal life, living in the same house all that time and hanging out with the same people. My wife also had the same job for most of that time, meaning our schedules stayed pretty much the same.

When I look back, life has been pretty good to my little family and me these past few years. But because so little seems to have changed, the thing that alarms me the most is just how quickly those years have flown by. It feels like one year just passed into the next.

Of course, that’s silly in a way because obviously many things have changed, both at work and at home. For example, lots of people have come and gone at work, I’ve had two different bosses and I moved desks twice.

At home, I’ve watched my daughter grow from being a newborn baby to a little lady, and my dog go from being a pup to a middle aged dog (although, being a Labrador Retriever, he will always be a puppy to some extent). We’ve replaced our flooring and our roof, bought two cars, replaced all of our appliances except the dryer and redecorated our kitchen twice in that time.

But I still can’t shake the feeling that the time passed by far too quickly and little has changed. While some people believe lots of change seems to make time go faster, I believe the opposite.

Desire for constant change

I suppose part of my desire for constant change could be attributed to the fact I moved around a lot as a kid. My parents seemed to believe buying a new house or moving to a new neighbourhood was the key to happiness — always a fresh start, either with a bigger house or a smaller one, closer to the city or further out.

I actually went to three different high schools and could have even went to a fourth one if I hadn’t decided not to transfer schools yet again when we moved prior to my final year of high school.

I got so used to change my mother told me it was time to start putting down some roots once I finished university. She was right, but I never lost that sense of wanderlust and constantly looking for change in my life.

To me this personal story is relevant to the whole notion of change management for two reasons. First of all, you should never assume everyone dislikes change and is going to resist it.

Secondly, even with a self-confessed “change junkie” like me, there are times when you might meet with at least some resistance — especially if the change isn’t perceived as being 100 per cent positive for that person.