Change hurts!

The hurting is not the woe-is-me kind of hurt, that executives tend to dismiss as an affliction of the weak and sentimental, but the actual physical and psychological discomfort....and...brain pictures prove it.

Watching different areas of the brain light up in response to specific thoughts has brought a new understanding to the corporeal mechanics of psychology in general and to our response to change in particular.  These advances are bringing a much-needed hard foundation of science to a leadership challenge that has long seemed hopelessly soft and poorly defined: change management.

For this story on The New Science of Change by Christopher Koch in the September 15, 2006 issue of CIO magazine, go to: http://www.cio.com/archive/091506/change.html

Comments

[Stephanie West Allen]

Also see the Fast Company article "Change or Die" here:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or-die.html

And the Booz-Allen article "The Neuroscience of Leadership" here:

http://www.strategy-business.com/press/freearticle/06207

If these break up as the one in my prior comment did, just do a Google search on the article titles. They are both excellent about resistance to change and how change hurts.