Show Notes
Announcing change is not the same as leading people through it.
Organizations frequently describe adaptability as an employee responsibility: the work is changing, the technology is coming, and people must learn to keep up. But leaders shape the conditions under which adaptation either becomes possible or begins to feel like a threat.
In this episode, author and technologist Ryan R. Campbell introduces the ABCs of leading people through change: Autonomy, Belonging, and Competence.
These three human needs help explain why even seemingly beneficial changes can provoke anxiety, grief, skepticism, or resistance. A new system may make work faster while reducing someone’s control over how it is performed. Automation may eliminate repetitive tasks while also threatening the expertise through which a person built their identity. A reorganization may improve efficiency while disrupting the relationships that made work feel meaningful.
In this episode:
Why the Luddites were skilled craftspeople defending more than their jobs
How technological change can threaten craft, status, independence, and identity
What autonomy, belonging, and competence look like in practice
Why leaders should maintain a “psychological balance sheet” during change
How to restore agency when some choices must be removed
Why surveillance and control often intensify the damage caused by disruption
How to involve the people closest to the work in shaping automation
Why resistance is information—not an explanation
The importance of avoiding “deprivation stacked on top of deprivation”
The central question is not whether the work will change. It will. The question is whether leaders will treat people as obstacles to that change—or create the conditions in which they can participate, adapt, and continue to matter.
The work will change. It always has. Our obligation to the people doing it should evolve with it.
Written and hosted by Ryan R. Campbell.
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R: On Everything is a podcast about technology, work, creativity, culture, and the ideas connecting them.