Riding the change curve

Yesterday I was presenting at an organisation's internal HR conference. I gave the same presentation I've been doing all year, on the theme of 'change and opportunity'. I explain the enormous pressures for change currently facing learning and development, and the opportunities we have at our disposal to respond to these changes using new media. I also take the chance to debunk a whole load of the pop psychology which has held back l&d for decades.

While waiting for my slot, I attended another presentation on change - actually rather a good one - given by an internal specialist. Part of this presentation was a discussion of the 'change curve' which is often used to describe the change process. You've probably seen it, it goes something like this:

I say 'something like this' because I explored it on Google and there were so many variations, mostly unaccredited, that I gave up counting. It seems that the originator of the change curve is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, back in 1975. Kübler-Ross used it to explain the reaction of individuals to major losses, such as bereavement, although it seems to have been adapted as a way to explain, even to manage, changes in organisations.

The model is attractive, because it's easy to relate to your own experience. I immediately began to wonder where l&d professionals were on the change curve when it comes to engaging with new media. I thought about the audience for my presentation: Did new media still have the capability to shock? How many would still be in denial? Would I attract an angry response? At what point in the future would my work become redundant as the whole profession emerges into a state of total and happy commitment?

Anyway, that was where I saw this post going. Until I started to look a little more into the model. I wanted to know whether it really held water. The answer came in The Change Curve Debunked in the Performance Psychology blog, which I’m going to quote liberally:

One of the concepts that is misunderstood and misapplied frequently, even by major players in change, is that of the Change Curve.

The Change Curve is an adaptation of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five-stage theory that seeks to explain how people deal with catastrophic personal loss (e.g. loss of a job, freedom, finances, status, identity) or grief (loss of a loved one). The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

It has also been observed that personal change can be somewhat like personal loss and, therefore, the model has been applied to change. Indeed, I have seen it stated, more or less as fact, that when people change they need to be helped along this curve. I’ve also seen it reduced to four (that way it fits nicely in a matrix) and three stages.

But wait a minute. Let’s not let the facts get in the way of a nice model. On the other hand, let’s debunk this baby right now.

(Let’s overlook the fact that the five-stage model has had little empirical testing in its own right, and particularly in relation to organisational change.)

First of all, Kübler-Ross herself stated that people do not necessarily go through all of the stages, and if they do, it can be in any order. Indeed, people can experience a whole range of emotions at different times during grief.

Second, and for me the real point, is that change is not always experienced as loss. Some people love it. It’s exciting. It’s new. It’s a break with the crappy old way of doing things. It’s liberating. Why have we given change which, let’s face it, people do all the time, such a bad press that it is considered synonymous with grief?

By all means, keep the five-stage model in our armoury, but let’s not get carried away with it. Let’s not present it as an unequivocal truth. And let’s not let it get in the way of attempting to truly understand how people really experience change.

Phew. See how easy it is to fall into that old pop psychology trap. Just escaped this time.