What Happens To The Others?

When we look at organizational change and innovative processes, we focus on the benefits for our business. But what happens to the people who don’t fit into those new ideas? Change is often not going to be positive for everyone.

A few years ago, Hong Kong changed their education system, and whereas before they would have 7 years of secondary school, with university being a 3-year process, they switched to a system where they dropped the “Secondary 7” year and a bachelor’s degree at a university would now take 4 years. This was a useful change for those students who actually go on to university and into the multinational job market, since it makes their degree more in line with one from a Western university, but what happens to those students who don’t go to post-secondary education? They just lost a year of schooling that presumably prepared them better for life after graduation, and now that’s gone. Did the government have any plan for dealing with the effects on the students?

Think about it from your perspective as a leader: what happens to your employees’ skills when most people in the labor force have one less year of education than they used to? For that matter, consider the leadership in the education sector: what do they do with all the teachers who are no longer needed because there will be fewer students? About 1,600 teachers lost their jobs, and while some could find a new position in post-secondary institutions — which suddenly needed more people as another year of education was added to the curriculum — many others don’t have the qualifications to teach at that level.

When you go through an organizational change, what happens to your employees who no longer fit in? Do you just let them go with a pat on the back? Do you try to find a place for them? If this isn’t just about skills but about working style (e.g., you’ve gone from a collaborative workplace in the office to a dispersed workforce that works from home) can you “retrain” personality styles? If your promotion system was based on seniority but you’ve transitioned to a meritocracy system, what do you do with those people who were waiting in the wings, thinking they were about to move up, and who learn that what they’ve been doing to get ahead all these years isn’t what’s needed anymore?

It’s not to say you shouldn’t change, but you need to consider human costs along with all the other facets of change. If you are creating a new organizational culture, there will be people who don’t fit in anymore, people who in many cases have been there a long time. If you are putting more efficient work processes into place, you may not need as many people anymore…what happens to the extras? Simple morality demands that you consider what you’re going to do rather than leaving people in the dark and then pushing them out. Part of your change strategy needs to consider the people most affected by that change.