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Published Jan 30, 2024

Vanessa Gennarelli: Surviving Change at Work

Vanessa Gennarelli shares invaluable insights on navigating career transitions, understanding workplace change, and balancing mission-driven work with financial realities, offering practical advice for adapting to new leadership and leveraging uncertainty for growth.
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Episode Highlights

  • Leadership

    Leadership transitions are inevitable in any organization, and understanding how to navigate them can be crucial for career growth. explains that new leaders often set high-level goals within their first 90 days, and employees should align their work with these goals to demonstrate their value 1. She advises highlighting successful team dynamics and seeing the new leader's vision as an opportunity rather than a directive 2.

    This is the time where you can convince a new leader of where you want to take something. This is the time where you can try something new.

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    By doing so, employees can position themselves as partners in the new leader's vision, rather than just subordinates.

       

    Resistance

    Employee resistance is a significant barrier to successful organizational change. notes that 70% of change initiatives fail due to resistance, often stemming from loss of autonomy and fear of the unknown 3. She suggests that employees focus on their next steps and find multiple potential paths forward to regain a sense of control 4.

    I advise folks to just think about their next step and find three general directions that would work for you, for your next step.

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    This approach helps mitigate fear and allows employees to adapt more effectively to change.

       

    Adapting

    Adapting to organizational changes requires understanding the different stages of company growth. outlines these stages, from early product-market fit to hypergrowth, and explains how each phase demands different skills and mindsets 5. She emphasizes that hypergrowth phases, in particular, require more structured processes and reduced autonomy 6.

    When things go wrong, you are unlikely to have any sort of standard operating procedure. But you do begin to have some HR people, your ability to hire a little bit more, that's how you know you're in that phase.

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    Recognizing these stages can help employees align their skills and expectations with the company's evolving needs.

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