You Decide

I was recently reminded (in my yoga class) that for true transformation to take place you must surrender. Surrender what? What if I don’t want to? What then? The act of surrendering is not to give up; it is an active decision to change. This process is not easy or pain free, but when the decision is made you will be able to see other opportunities. You give yourself permission to be open to change. In an organizational context changes occur daily, surrendering does not. This is supported by Hiatt and Creasey (2012) who suggested that the largest obstacle to change is the desire to change. Kotter et al., (2021) added that openness to change requires an individual to be curious instead of fearful. This type of mindset supports and encourages innovation, allowing people to shift or course correct before introducing higher risk and resistance.

Shifting from yoga to the workplace – what does this mean in your work life? Incremental changes such as process improvements or the introduction of new technologies may be small changes that lead to the transformation of a department or the entire organization. To convince people to surrender Kotter et al. (2021) among most other change management experts, advise executive leadership to take an active part in developing the message of urgency and actively and continuously participating. Additionally, to ensure active decisions are made, every level of leadership must be involved and remain supportive all the way through to operationalization.

Given this information, can anyone think of a better time than right now to begin a transformation? Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving and changing the way we do work whether we like it or not. However, how successful it will be is completely dependent on our willingness to change. Most organizations lack the foundational processes such as data governance or knowledge management to successfully embed and deploy AI tools, (Bena et al., 2025) however this is not stopping companies from continuing to develop more tools to sell. I recently attended a conference that demonstrated Agent to Agent orchestration by a well-known SaaS company. As I read the room, it was clear that no one was ready.

So, my question is who in your organization communicates the urgency, the messaging that is needed to surrender? And who will listen?

 #phd #AI #organizationalchange #transformation #data #datagovernance #knowledgemanagement #universityofarizona #processimprovement

References:

Bena, Y. A., Ibrahim, R., Mahmood, J., Al-Dhaqm, A., Alshammari, A., Nasser, M., Nura Yusuf, M., & Ayemowa, M. O. (2025). Big Data Governance Challenges Arising From Data Generated by Intelligent Systems Technologies: A Systematic Literature Review. IEEE Access, Access, IEEE, 13, 12859–12888. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3528941

Hiatt, Jeffrey M.; Creasey, Timothy J. (2012). Change Management: The People Side of Change. Prosci Inc. Second Edition 2012

Kotter, J. P., Akhtar, V., & Gupta, G. (2021). Change: How organizations achieve hard-to-imagine results in uncertain and volatile times. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.