It’s 2025 and hasn’t the year has gotten off to a cracking pace?

Those I was meeting with in mid-January were talking about the lack of “ease back in” time this year. Of course, in many ways we perpetuate this.

It’s helpful to now and again stop and ask:  How might I be contributing to the constant hamster on a wheel, cult of busyness cycle I find myself drawn into?

For me one of the ways I was perpetuating this hamster on a wheel cycle was through resistance to change. Yes, even me. No one is immune!

But that resistance was costing me – time, mental energy and space. I needed to create efficiencies within my practice to claim back that space and that meant facing my arch nemesis… AI.

As a people person my head liked to conjure up horror stories about the evil, cold hearted perils of AI – and those food service robots in the restaurants weren’t helping. My hyper vigilance around them was (okay, still is) a constant source of amusement to my friends.

Whilst I’m not all in just yet (those robots seriously creep me out) I’m halfway there and can see and have embraced some of the opportunities available to me.

There’s so much more to embrace and that’s a work in progress. But my mind is now open, not closed and I’m happy to sit in the discomfort this type of philosophical change can bring.

Here’s the story of how I moved from resistant to (semi) embracing and realised the positive benefits of change.

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

We undertook a large scale IT migration over the January period and it was equal parts exciting and challenging:

Exciting as we now have one point of access and a system that does so much more than we could have imagined, creating efficiencies through streamlined and automated processes, and providing a visual dashboard so everything we need to remember isn’t in our head anymore. (Or scribbled over 350 post-it-notes or random white boards).

Essentially, it’s a system that will CREATE SPACE.

  • Mentally.
  • In our calendars, and
  • Organizationally.

(Sound familiar – grab your free copy of my e-book here if you haven’t already.)

Create space for important things like ensuring:

  • I can get outside for a quick walk around the block inhaling fresh air and
    feeling the breeze on my face
  • I can clear my cognitive load, and
  • I can spend time doing the things I really love – like working with great
    people leading positive change

Challenging because truth be told, this change brought some challenges for me, primarily the deeply held internal belief that if I automate some process steps and emails, the person on the other side won’t feel as cared for, nurtured, valued, supported like they do now (with our clunky manual inefficient processes).

And whilst I have confirmed that’s not true (I asked!) sometimes the stories in our head can create enormous resistance and hold us back from progress personally and professionally. And none of us are immune.

As AI is being utilized more and more and wide scale digital transformations are taking place there’s a raft of worries about how this will impact human connection (and of course jobs).

In fact, as I write this the January-February 2025 edition of the Harvard Business Review is sitting on my desk with the feature article “Why people resist embracing AI”.

According to author Assistant Professor Julian De Freitas from Harvard Business School:

AI’s success hinges not only on its capabilities…
but on people’s willingness to harness them
.

So how can we help people willingly step into the fold?

Understanding common barriers to change is useful in understanding where resistance may be stemming from.

De Freitas shares five main obstacles associated with AI uptake.  In ruthlessly summarized form these are:

People believe AI is too opaque – and the lack of visibility frustrates people’s basic desire for knowledge and understanding.

People believe AI is emotionless – one way the author proposes organisations help remove this obstacle is to personalize the AI bot.  Think naming, personality, voice – case in point Alexa or Siri.

People believe AI is too inflexible – De Freitas suggests that AI systems incorporate user feedback and include safeguards for handling unexpected input appropriately, many such systems already do this.

People believe AI is too anonymous – and therefore there’s a feeling of threat by a system that can perform a task without human interaction; and

People would rather have human interaction – ahh the story in my head!
De Freitas studies show that people consistently prefer humans and believes this stems from the belief that robots don’t have human like awareness and lack the capacity to understand.  (If you’ve ever stopped your RoboVac from banging its head repeatedly against the same wall you’ll know this holds some truth!)

Each of these five steps is expanded in detail here Why People Resist Embracing AI. If you’re responsible for AI adoption I strongly suggest a deep read.

The author warns that:

No matter how much money your business
invests in artificial intelligence, your leadership team must consider the psychological barriers to its adoption. 

I resonate with all five of these obstacles above.

The Cost of Resistance

My previous resistance to AI has meant I still took handwritten or typed notes during meetings instead of letting the Teams or Zoom AI bot take these for me.

It meant I’d not leant in to training or reading on the topic because “I’m a human-to-human kind of person and love people”, perpetuating that story in my head that AI is this invisible monster that will remove all relational aspects from my interactions.

The reason I eventually took the leap to lean in was because I became AWARE of the need to change.

I knew I was heavily manual in my work systems and processes, and that took up a lot of time I would rather spend coaching or consulting or speaking with fabulous humans like you trying to make positive change.

And, I wanted more space this year.

So lean in I have – but not without supports.  I’ve engaged in training to see what other invisible intangible doodads are out there to help me. And I’ve taken De Freitas’ advice and personalised our AI helpers (that was fun!). Now known as “munchkins” at Team THV I now envisage cute furry warm and cuddly critters not cold hard severe bots – it worked!

Getting Momentum

This kind of philosophical change isn’t easy – even for those of us who do “change” for a living.

Creating awareness of the need to change is the fundamental first step in any change initiative including when building mentally healthy workplaces, leading a culture transformation initiative, or trying to balance your productivity with your wellbeing.

Understanding the why and being able to equate that to personal benefits is a catalyst for reducing resistance and moving your change initiative forward.

Change will always be a constant as will resistance. It is part of our human hardwiring to spot the negative before the benefits.  Clever change leads need to be able to navigate that to affect the changes they want to implement.

I’ve been speaking with many such people in the last month primarily wanting to activate their psychosocial safety initiatives.

If that’s you too, and you’re looking for help to get lift off or propel your change initiative my PROPEL program may be the answer. You can find out more here: Propel – Change Facilitation – Tanya Heaney-Voogt

Need help now?  

About Tanya

Positive Change Drives Positive Results

A keynote speaker and author of 3 books with a career spanning more than 25 years in leading people, culture, projects and change, Tanya knows what it takes to cut through the noise and create positive change at work.

Known for her highly engaging approach alongside her evidence-based programs, Tanya’s programs are highly impactful which is why her clients continue to partner with her for years.

Working with CEO’s, Senior Executives, and People, Culture and Safety Teams, Tanya’s clients often say they are:

■ Wanting to create a mentally healthy and high performing workplace but don’t know how to start
■Struggling with team dynamics and culture challenges impacting on wellbeing and productivity
■ Implementing workplace change and want to ensure best practice so that it doesn’t fail or lose engagement of their teams
■ Going through complex change and people are stressed, overwhelmed and need to get change back on a more positive track
■ Are afraid of losing good people and the organisations’ reputation when tackling a significant change
■ Wanting to ensure their people thrive, not just survive.

View her books here.

Email: tanya@tanyaheaneyvoogt.com

Book in a 30-minute no obligation chat: click here.

Tanya Heaney-Voogt

Director & Principal Consultant
MBA, ICFACC, MAHRI, Dip Mgt, Dip Coaching, Prosci® Certified Change Practitioner
E: tanya@tanyaheaneyvoogt.com

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