Coping with Change at 7 Cups
A recent theme in our discussions has been change and 7 cups - more specifically, how can we as a community better cope with change - change in the product, change in procedures, change in design etc. I wrote a post on where we are going yesterday to help frame some of these recent changes. Lets take a few minutes to zoom out and look at change and also identify steps so we can better adjust moving forward.
1. Change can feel scary - many of us come from backgrounds that can be described as challenging. We like things to feel predictable because it helps us feel safe. When things are unpredictable we get anxious. Why do we get anxious? We get anxious because it is easy to imagine that the the new and unexpected might cause us pain.
If you do not know what is going to happen, then you have to draw from your past to try to predict what will happen. If you have been hurt quite a bit, then it is very natural to project that you will get hurt again. This isnt something that happens consciously; it is something that happens unconsciously below the surface.
2. Becoming Aware - if we know we may have a tendency to be anxious in uncertain situations - like not knowing how a new change will impact things at 7 cups - then we can counter that belief by doing the following.
We can ask:
What is the evidence that this change will harm me or others I care about?
(list evidence)
What is the evidence that this change will be neutral or even good?
(list evidence)
Once you have that list you can make a rational judgement as to whether or not the situation is something to be fearful or concerned about.
3. We can talk about the change well in advance - weve started going a better job of this recently, but we have some room to grow here. We now have dedicated forum threads on each item.
4. We can listen respectfully to the concerns we have, we can adjust the feature to adjust those concerns when appropriate before launch, we can rapidly update the feature so it keeps getting better after launch, we can collect data on the feature and see how it is working.
5. We can keep an ongoing dialog open so people know they can always express things they like and things they dont like.
I welcome your feedback and any other ideas you might have on how we can better manage change moving forward. Thank you.
This is one thing that I admire about 7 Cups- this community is receptive to good feedback and constructive criticism. Although change is scary, as @GlenM said, this community provides outlets for this anxiety and allows everyone to talk about things that went well and things that don't go so well.
Excellent, I would only add that explaining the necessity of change is important. If I have to go through a change, I need to fully understand Why the current method/state adopted is not helpful or is not 100% efficient. :)
What I really appreciate about this post is that it serves as a good reminder to all of us that to make change work, we all have to do our part.
Our job as members of the community is to try to understand why a change is being put in place, what good it may do, what our concerns are, etc. and to express our concerns in a constructive way while also acknowledging those benefits. And then ultimately to accept the decisions that are made and do our best to engage positively with them and continue to seek ways to help them improve to benefit our members.
The job as admins of the site is to first communicate the plans so that they can hear the community's thoughts, then think through the feedback and try to respond and adapt the change as needed to address concerns where they arise, while remaining communicative.
And when everyone does this, we end up with a far better solution than we would have had with any one person 'getting their way' or without change in the first place. More and more I'm seeing a trend towards this on 7 cups - both the up front transparency and responsiveness to feedback and the constructive forms of feedback from everyone - and I am prouder than ever to be a part of this community.
Changing is a scary challenge, most of us feels like it's distributing, confusing and don't know how to cope with it, but then we face it, figure it out and realize how we needed those changes because we can't face today's problems with yesterday's solutions ! I think that we need to arm oursleves with courage, bravery and love to faces the new challenges and make our away to a better and better community ❤
@GlenM
I feel this post is so relevant even today, we're all forever evolving, and making peace with the idea of change seems vital here! Thankyou for addressing the same!🌻
