Merger mania is sweeping the media business and there is no turning back. According to Variety, a report by PwC stated the number of mergers and acquisitions between major companies increased exponentially in 2014.
Just imagine the impact…if you work for Time Warner Cable, you woke up one morning and found out you just became a potential Comcast employee, depending how the chips fall. Change is not a theory to the Time Warner Cable folks, it’s a full throttle in your face experience. Because of the velocity of change from adopting social, mobile and other technologies, our crystal ball, which told us future no longer works. Predicting what will happen has got much more difficult.
Knowing exactly how to lead change is as important as drinking water – it’s not a nice to have, it’s an essential. Change is not pretty and there is always some kind loss – your company merges, a new system is put into place that throws everything upside down or a shift in priorities erases the one thing you cared most about.
Always when change occurs the first thing we think of is ME! How is this going to impact me! Sometimes the answers are simply not there because the company may not know or they may not be willing to tell you. How do you navigate? By focusing on yourself first. Just as when you are on an airplane, the safety video always tells you to put the oxygen mask on you first, so too you must handle you at the onset.
Here is a 5 step formula you can apply today to lead yourself and others through change:
- Consider a change you are currently going through in your organization. Write it down.
- What emotions come up for you as you think about the change?
- What is your experience about the change? (e.g. well we are always changing around here, add this to the list or we have talked so much about the possibility of change just go ahead and do it, I don’t care anymore.)
- What actions are you taking in your environment at work to support the changes?
- What do you need to start and stop doing in order to ensure the change sticks?
