PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Take a Lesson from Beauty and the Beast: Don’t Be Afraid of Change

Throughout my career, I have usually been the person to lead the charge for a major change. I have been the change so often that I have written papers and given presentations about change management. When change happens to an organization, the pattern is always the same. Interestingly, it can mirror the five stages of grief.

Major change can spark denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When change happens, how will you respond? For some people, change doesn’t seem to impact them; maybe because they are open-minded, or they don’t know how it was done before, so the change isn’t an issue; or because they were waiting for a change. Or maybe, years ago, they invented the thing that is going to be changed today.

Though those people might have already “graduated,” they may still hold firm to the idea that their way is the only way, and any change is a mistake.

I recently rewatched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and realized that “Mob Song” gives examples of how some people deal with change at the beginning. If you don’t recall, “Mob Song” happens toward the end of the movie when Gaston is angry that he was rejected by Belle in favor of the Beast. Gaston decides, rather than lose, he will lead a mob to the castle so that they can start a war with the Beast and his staff of enchanted objects.

In “Mob Song,” Gaston is the loud, scorned man, leading the opposition to change. His henchman, LeFou, leads the mob of followers for no other reason than he is trying to curry favor with Gaston. And while it’s not great to be a sycophant like LeFou, the people who make even less sense are the mob of Frenchmen. The two telling lines of the song that show the Frenchmen have no idea why they are following Gaston are, “We don’t like what we don’t understand, in fact it scares us” and, “Here we come, we’re 50 strong and 50 Frenchmen can’t be wrong!”

When you hear about change and you see a mob forming, what do you do? Do you blindly follow and join the mob, or do you ask for more information?

I recommend that you do better than the 50 Frenchmen, a suck-up like LeFou, and a bully like Gaston. Be better. Be Belle. Ask questions and make your own choices. And when it’s your turn to be the changemaker, I hope you know that the five stages of grief will come, but change is good, and so are you. AL