Change Management at Individual Level

Last week we had a nice meeting at Estonian Business School with a pleasant group of 33 new MBA students from Bangladesh, Belgium, France, Poland, Ukraine, and of course – also Estonia. We started by introducing ourselves to the core topics and requirements of our course that included the following elements.

1. Individual Homework

During the course, all participants need to prepare and update weekly STEP journal where they reflect upon an important habit that they would like to change. Or alternatively – upon a very important objective that they would like to reach before the end of the course. Download your STEP journal here. Your regular weekly STEP journal where you are going to observe and report upon your success on changing a particular habit. You must focus on personally meaningful issue. E.g. achieving an important objective, stopping smoking, losing weight, overcoming shyness, learning to talk more in large audiences, improving relationship with your close relative or a friend, increasing reading speed, developing a healthy life style, overcoming chronic lateness, and so on. First – formulate your objective and thereafter write a weekly STEP journal on how you managed to change your habits. In your individual journal, focus on two aspects

• My strenghts. What were the 3 things that you did well during the week that brought about some kind of real result. Do not enter too much into detail. Just explain in a couple of words what did you do and achieve. “What is it that I am proud of? What did I achieve? How did my activities help myself? How did they help others? What worked really well? What made it successful? What can I share with the others?“ Remember – when you do something proactively then it tends to be “invisible”. When your room is a mess, everybody can see it. When it is properly cleaned, it cannot be seen so easily. Therefore – whenever you do something that prepares yourself for the future or what avoids the problems on the future, try to make sure that you keep track of those things and list them also as your strengths!
• My development. Second – practice humility. What could be those things that you could have done better, faster, smarter! What could you learn in the future. “What I could have done better next time? What did I learn? If I do not have resources myself, then who could help me?“

2. Group Work

You will divide into groups of 2-3 students. Try to be diverse. Mix male and female, nationalities. Conduct an interview with a manager of a company with more than 10 employees that has recently gone through a transition initiative. You should audio record their interview (make sure to get the permission from the person you are interviewing). Then transcribe (type) the answers to each of the interview questions with the exact wording used by the person being interviewed. You should also write your reflection about some new ideas you gained about organizational change from this interview.

Thereafter we focused on individual change. See the slides below.

http://www.slideshare.net/markorillo/ebs-change-management-change-at-individual-level