Sense and sensibility during organizational change
The role of emotions during change was the topic at the DIG and HUB Corporate Workshop on May 24 in Oslo.
Radical change tends to trigger uncertainty and ambiguity. Negative feelings and emotions can create a barrier for change and typically, professionals are advised to regulate emotions at work.
Don’t regulate, elevate
Based on his PhD thesis, Marius Jones argued that the common advice to regulate emotions may not always be beneficial.
Instead, he argued, there is lots of learning that can be gained by elevating rather than regulating emotions. His research on emotion elevation in start-ups shows how emotions can become a valued resource for teams and organizations.
Friday afternoon ventilating
Jacob Mørch and Christer Dalsbøe in Braver, a start-up that specializes on sparking and facilitating innovation in the established firm, have institutionalized emotion elevation by every Friday afternoon spending 1,5 hours with their employees “ventilating” any concerns or frustrations they may have experienced during the week. The goal is to learn and improve.
Handling contradicting demands
Thora Lou has many years of experience working as a senior consultant advising and supporting organizations through radical change. Thora is currently working on a PhD exploring how senior leaders experience and handle paradoxical demands where they are torn between seemingly contradicting demands.
In the way or a resource?
The three presentations triggered a lively debate among workshop participants on the role of emotions in their organizations and the extent to which emotions were perceived as in the way of productive work and organizational change or a key resource for change.
The workshop was hosted by DIG partner COOP and we’d like to thank Pernille Noreng and her colleagues in COOP for their generous invitation to their headquarters in Oslo
In addition to COOP, we were joined by representatives from DNB, Telenor, KPMG, Posten, TietoEVRY, DIGDIR and Asplan Viak.
This Corporate Workshop was organized and supported by the RaCE project in DIG. RaCE = Radical Technology-Driven Change in the Established Firm.