I had a rather refreshing conversation with a younger person this morning. It was refreshing because he was giving off good vibes about his developing and sustaining good relationships with his clients as well as his suppliers. He was able to provide details about how he went about doing so, and how he visualized growth for the company he currently works in.

It is people like him who will be relatively unshaken by any sort of change that others might find cataclysmic. “Change” has become such a dreaded word that we have put in place what we call “Change Management”. Of course, the logistics management of it all requires much work and much coordination, careful resource allocation and deployment, movement schedules and all the works, but Logistics and Operations people are quite on top of all that. There are any number of templates to help with the move, I’m sure, so that portion of change management, including Mergers and Acquisitions (M & As) are quite well taken care of. I’m assuming I’m talking about professional people here.

It is always the human element that would be most affected. Not because our people are “less educated” or “less qualified” to understand what’s going on. After all, you’re not trying to explain how bionic arms can be wet-wired into human tissue, are you? No, I don’t think it is because they fail to understand the necessities (from the Firm’s point of view) for the change. It is because no attention has been paid to the need for RMs.

By RMs I don’t mean Relationship Managers, although those come close. I am talking about Resentment Management. Resentment Management becomes necessary when your managers have not engaged in Relationship Management with their own teams, and with adjacent teams. It has been said that the people most affected by Change are the people on the ground, your organization’s “Privates”. People who see themselves as victims who need the jobs they currently hold, and who keep getting thrown “curveballs” by their supervisors and their managers. These “curveballs” are seen as highly disruptive to their work, causing them to suddenly need to learn whole new systems, for example, and perhaps become forced to explain the changes to customers or clients who might be rather upset with the changes. The resentment occurs because the ground staff feel like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed nothing but bullshit. What are you doing about Resentment Management, real or imagined, amongst your people? It has to be done now!

Got any changes coming down the line? Are they lurking below the horizon? Get your RMs ready, once they pop up over the horizon, they can come at you pretty quickly. Best prepare now.