Today I had a training course and there was much discussion on change within the workplace, the discussion was around how different people in the workplace handle change. There are some people who are first on board with the change, and then there are others who do everything that they can to try and prevent the change from occurring. The facilitator shared a great analogy with us about people and change. "People will either be on board the bus, or in front of the bus, but either way they will move," I thought this was a great analogy, because I know many people who would be standing in front of the bus of change, and it is usually the case that those people get out of the way once the bus starts moving because they have no other option, or in some cases, chase after the bus and jump on board as to moves away.
After thinking about this analogy, I decided that although it is true in most cases, it is not always the case, that people are moving. One instance is where the change is not one that anybody wants, and if more people are in front of the bus, than on the bus, then often the bus doesn't move. One of these instances is where a community stands up and petitions not to have something built in their area. Mostly these petitions lead to the building happening anyway, but sometimes these petitions can lead to the change not occurring, or the bus not moving, as it were. This can be for many reasons, it might be that the petition represents too many people in front of the bus, or it might be that the organisers for the change forgot to arrange for a driver (an adequate reason for the change to occur) for the bus, so it is not able to move forward. Whatever the reason, I like the analogy of change being represented by a bus because you can twist it in many different ways to support whether the change does, or does not occur.
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