You may have had a message from me earlier this year asking your opinion on the Change Management Survey. This year we focused on various aspects of the industry, one of which being career ambitions of those involved.
Interesting results from the Change Capability Community about their career ambitions for 2024. These are my views on the results from the poll:
I am surprised by a couple of these results – here is my understanding of why people may have voted this way in the 2024 change management survey.
As members of a change community, should we be surprised at the low figure for “improve understanding of change management”? After all, this is a group of professionals who are already skilled and experienced in management change and transformation.
However, although it might not be a top priority, I think continuing to build our skills should always be a focus, because the challenges we experience in change continue to evolve, and we need different skills to continue to excel.
For example, I believe that in 2024 we are going to need more data analysis skills, as we need to provide more evidence that change management activities are the reason that changes are realising benefits for our organisations.
Perhaps the scores for improving understanding of change management are lower because the respondents to this survey are taking a more practical approach, and that is why the desire to build their techniques and skills was the highest at 42%.
We need new solutions, new ideas, new ways of doing things to ensure we stay relevant and to achieve successful adoption of new ways of working. These new ideas are also a source of motivation, as our brains generate a high number of positive emotions when we learn. Our brains interpret skills development as a protection against threats. The more skilled we are, the more likely we will be able to survive whatever happens to us. Our brains create dopamine which gives us energy and motivation to do more every time we achieve a new understanding or acquire a new ability.
I think being able to do something (how) is going to continue to grow in importance over knowing what we should be doing (process) as we continue to grow our agility in responding to new change situations.
Although this is the second highest response at 35% I wish it were higher. The results of the Change Capability Survey show that we are still not a valued profession. There is so much more needed to establish change management as a valuable service to the business.
This is strongly connected with the need to align the work we do to help people adopt new ways of working with the results of those new ways of working – the increases in revenue/decreases in costs; greater customer satisfaction and greater staff engagement (which leads to increases in customer satisfaction).
This means skills and techniques in knowing what types of data to collect and how to measure our impact are going to become even more important.
Why is the percentage for this factor so low? Are change professionals not ambitious? I think only 11% stated that was their priority because there are so many things we want to achieve to improve our work, not just think about ourselves and our career.
However, we should focus on this as there is a link between our own increase in hierarchical power and the value that others ascribe to change management. It is a structural lever, if there is a director responsible for change, then this is a clear sign that the organisation values change management.
Look out for more support in overcoming imposter syndrome in the new year to tackle any hesitancy you might be feeling about aiming for promotion.
The Change Management survey for 2024 has been a great insight into the thoughts and feelings of people within the industry. Whilst I have been surprised by some of the results, I am glad that people have been able to express how they feel and their priorities.
Change management continues to evolve, and our career evolves along with it. Stay connected to your peers via our community events; keep learning and developing via our dedicated professional development platform.
