Change: when uncertainty is a certainty, science is a great guide

There’s a strong argument to be made that there are actually three certainties in life. Along with death and taxes, there’s change – which, as the cliché goes, is life’s only constant.

And if change is a certainty, there’s a kind of irony in that, because change is so much about uncertainty. Which is why people tend to dislike it. Uncertainty usually equals anxiety.

The flipside of that is all the positives of change. Like a caterpillar emerging as a butterfly, it can be transformative and beautiful. It can mean promise, new beginnings, opportunity. It can be life-changing. It can be something to embrace. Anecdotally, most of us know this, but our anxiety seems to keep it down and out of sight, struggling to see daylight.

This is where the intention of helping people better navigate the changes in their lives came from. It’s an idea that became the stated purpose of BrightRock, the Change Science Institute’s founding partner.

One way that BrightRock fulfils that purpose is functionally, through its products, with life insurance that can change as their clients’ lives change.

Another way is emotionally, with the insight that people deal better with change knowing others are going through something similar… the Change Exchange is a repository of thousands of stories of and by people going through changes.

Another way is scientifically – hence the Change Science Institute. Science provides research-based and evidence-based knowledge that can be applied practically, in different ways.

But science of change? Is that even a thing? Well, yes. Change science has existed for decades. It’s just come from different and apparently disparate disciplines like psychology, behavioural economics and neuroscience. But a rose by any other name still smells as sweet. It’s all science, and it all informs how we navigate change.

Part of what we hope to do at the Change Science Institute is to bring this diverse science together under one “umbrella.”

This is one of the reasons we’ve partnered with Henley Business School, where our institute is formally housed. As an established, international institution, Henley provides access to a vast pool of academics, alumni and students. This is valuable not just from a point of view of academic credibility, but because it enables us to go beyond academia and into the lives of individuals and businesses.

Why that matters speaks to the second part of what we want our institute to do, which is translate the science so that it’s accessible, especially to people who aren’t scientists. And we want to apply it so that people can put it to good, practical use.

For example, we’ve developed: the Change Personality Quiz, which helps people understand how they tend to feel about and respond to change; the Change Ready Score, which quantifies people’s willingness and ability to navigate change; and the Change Programme, a six-module programme designed to help people adapt to a change and to successfully make that change stick. These all draw from and integrate change science

Apart from courses and resources, our Change Science Explorer will also play a central role in bridging the science and its application. The role is currently occupied by Professor Nicola Kleyn, a former Dean of two different institutions. Nicola is not a change scientist (her background is in business and marketing), but describes herself as “change science curious,” and is especially curious about how the academic becomes personal. Her approach will be to enquire, question, search, synthesise, translate and report on change science from her own, experiential, human perspective.

Over time, we’ll continue to add and build great resources and reads, vlogs and pods, that make change science accessible and, most of all, useful.

While we won’t take the uncertainty out of change, the science does give us greater certainty about how people respond to change. The tools and insights that feeds can help guide people through life’s changes with more agency, more optimism, and more confidence.

Brendan Wade
Executive Lead: Change Science Institute