Saturday Catch-Up: Staying Positive

Kerrie Smit
May 18, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Oct 17

Change management is ultimately the skill of bringing information to people about changes so they'll understand the change and feel comfortable when it starts to impact.

Not all changes are going to be happy news for people. Just this week, the strata manager is repainting our common hallway with a nice, fresh coat of paint. Wonderful. But the colour is what I'm affectionately calling High School Blue. It certainly seems like it's going to be awful, and the current tasteful palette is to be no more. Even though I'm not happy about it, I can choose to be positive and move on, or I can choose to be engaging in an inner argument every time I walk the corridor outside my home.

Why would I choose to be positive when the repaint was unnecessary, has cost me money, and the colour scheme is truly awful? For my own sake. If I don't move on, I'll be allowing this change to produce a negative impact on me every day.

The power of staying positive is not applying the pasted smile of toxic positivity and welcoming every disappointment, misjudgement, and error with open arms. The true power of staying positive is creating a way forward through difficult or unfortunate circumstances, growing from an experience, or using our tools, personality, and drive to make things better.

In this week's Saturday Catch-up, we take a look at the theme of staying positive and its relationship to change management.

Insights on Positive Change and Growth

The Power of Change Management in Enhancing Customer Experience. (27 January 2024) argued that providing a great customer experience may require micro-shifts in thinking away from providing what you want towards providing what they want. Change management can support customer experience by ensuring these transitions are smooth, efficient, and embraced by stakeholders at all levels.
Workplace Community and Wellbeing: Fostering a Healthy and Productive Environment (10 May 2024) highlighted that a mentally healthy workforce is a more productive workforce. Applying great change management, including consultation, involvement, engagement, and communication, can lead to better outcomes for both individuals and organisations.
Effective communication: is it the first business fundamental?. (March 2024) posited that effective communication is not just a valuable skill—it's a prerequisite for achievement. By mastering communication, you can build stronger relationships, align goals, and ultimately propel your career to reflect who you are and why you're uniquely suited to the opportunities you desire.
The life-changing value of hard work (19 January 2024) took a lighter approach to the mental adjustment of staying positive about something we might not feel like doing (like helping a friend with their home renovation). In doing the hard things, we are participants in our own lives, we open up new opportunities that didn't exist before, and we learn and grow
Moving beyond uncertainty (March 2024) covered how the challenges we face through change are raw materials for creating something new. By not viewing uncertainty as a void, but viewing it instead as a blank canvas, we're demonstrating the courage to start moving towards the change.