Change management & leadership: a Design perspective

Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

Processes and frameworks are a way for us humans to make sense of the world around us, whether it’s using design thinking to build products, the Montessori method to raise children, the scientific method to create new vaccines, or the stages of grief to help process change.

I was inspired by a wonderful interview / teaching between Rich Litvin and Vicki Shillington, focused on Vicki’s work as an executive coach for ThinqShift around leading in crisis. The interview shares this model, borrowed from change curve theory about Three Phases of change— Chaos, Acceptance, and the New Normal.

Courtesy of ThinqShift

I love this framework and in thinking about leadership through change management, have been adapting it slightly with my own design perspective to apply it both to the current pandemic and more generally to how leaders face ambiguity throughout their work & home lives. I’m sharing a design perspective of it to:

1. Help leaders faced with change understand and recognize what stage they’re in and what stage people around them are in
2. Collectively continue to make sense of this current pandemic