Casandra Daubney facilitated at excellent Masterclass for sharedserviceslink.com this month.  Much of her work is about Change.  Her mantra is that if you want to secure change and improvement in performance, then it is all about changing behaviour.  Not systems.  Not policies.  But behaviour.  Being creatures of habit, some of us dig our heels in so deeply and avoid change at any cost.  We resist and tense up and even cry and stamp our feet at the prospect.  Casandra would say that individuals who show these symptoms are in the ‘Denial part of the J Curve’  This is the second time this month I have heard shared serivces execs talk about the ‘J Curve’.

‘So what is it?’  I hear you ask.  I know it might sound fun and a little playful, involving a slide which makes one ‘whoop’ as you descend… but actually it’s pretty painful.  Casandra swears that whenever a circumstance dies, which could be the death of processing an invoice in a certain way to the death of relationship, we start our journey down the Curve.  First comes Denial.  Heels are dug in, teeth are gritted, eyes turn to narrow slits and you do everything you can to do what you always did in the way you always did it.  Then after you see that approach collapsing around you, you become angry.  Anger is the Second Post on the Curve.  You can see angry behaviour everwhere, and in P2P it involves ‘being nasty’ about the new process, standing by your opinion that the old way was better.  However, people instigating change in orgranisations can identify these angy people a mile off and take comfort that atleast they are near the Final Post.  Which is?

Acceptance.  Ah – this is a place of quietness and ease, a place where ‘things just happen’ without the screaming and the shouting.  Acceptance brings you out of the dip in the J Curve and the end place looks better and rosier that the circumstance you were grieving over.  And this really is the Beginning. 

The interesting thing is we go through this curve many times every day.  Another interesting observation Casandra talks about is that you can accelerate the pace at which you go through the curve.  And you can make it more shallow.  But you cannot shortcut the stages and go from Denial to Acceptance.  You will always have those three. 

If you are interested in knowing how to manage people in P2P who are at these stages email me at susie.west@sharedserviceslink.com