Change Management Fundamentals “Gangnam Ivan Style” – Part XXXXXIV:

In my opinion, organizations need to embrace the notion that during periods of change it is critical to ensure that policies and procedures are in place to identify individuals exercising “Psychopathic, Masochistic and/ or Narcissistic” behaviours as a by product of significant change. It is important for organizations to acknowledge that during periods of change, the greatest risk to successful change is posed by “Psychopathic, Masochistic and/ or Narcissistic” behaviours. For detailed information on how such behaviours function in the modern day workplace, please refer to the book, “Office Politics, How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks” written by British psychologist, Oliver James.However, my focus here is on the realm of “Psychopathic, Masochistic and/ or Narcissistic” behaviours in the context of change management since by its very nature, significant change tends to trigger such adverse behaviours which I define as follows: (1) Psychopathic behaviours triggered by significant change tend to be leveraged on being the last man, woman or transvestite standing such that people can become cold, heartless and cutthroat in order to survive; (2) Masochistic behaviours triggered by significant change tend to be leveraged on being the man, woman or transvestite identified for a promotion such that people can become manipulators of the facts and circumstances in their favour via charm, smoke screens and mirrors in order to get ahead of the rest; (3) Lastly, narcissistic behaviours triggered by significant change tend to be leveraged on being the man, woman or transvestite identified as the top performing superstar such that people can become exclusively focused on me, myself and I with the constant desire to impress and stand out from the rest. The key point to note is that such adverse behaviours tend to be triggered by periods of significant change particularly in a white collar working environment whereby everybody tends to be focused on them self with an insatiable desire to survive the significant change as opposed to an insatiable desire to manage the significant change. That is, significant change by its very nature tends to take white collar individuals out of their comfort zone as they tend to have been rewarded in the past by a status quo formula which recognized their past contribution in an understood internal cultural way whereas significant change by its nature tends to threaten this past understood recognition. It is important to note that white collar workers differ from blue collar workers on a shop floor whereby blue collar worker performance can generally be easily measured by a “units-of-output” approach while white collar worker performance tends to be more subjective to measure by its very nature. The key point to note is that significant change by its very nature tends to trigger “Psychopathic, Masochistic and/ or Narcissistic” behaviours particularly amongst white collar staff such that if not managed properly such bad behaviours can result in an internal blood bath.

In summary, I refer to “Change Management Gangnam Ivan Style” as the belief that significant change, if not managed properly amongst white collar staff, can result in an internal blood bath.

PSY - Gangnam Style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUk69c72UlY