frankwork

I don’t often hear people talking about integration in the workplace. Instead it’s something that comes up frequently in conversations about personal work. With new insight about who you are, you need time to integrate those lessons. You may backslide — two steps forward, one step back — but the consistent effort to observe yourself, to understand the source of your behaviors, provides an enhanced awareness that can help you reach a more satisfying, less anxious experience in your everyday life, such as in communication with loved ones, bosses, friends, and strangers.

But there’s also an integration that goes on at both a micro and macro level in the world of professional work. Individually, we develop new skills and areas of expertise over time, growing more competent as our career progresses — gaining promotions, new levels of responsibility, greater confidence in our ability to achieve results.

A level up, though, organizations and indeed entire industries take time to integrate new ideas, whether they relate to social marketing, green behavior, the Internet, or any other business trend. The integration happens over time, through reading industry publications, attending conferences, watching competitors. We start to spot new opportunities, new ways of dealing with old challenges.

Recognizing that we need time to integrate, individually, departmentally, organizationally is a way to acknowledge that growth occurs in stages. In a fast-paced organization or career, stepping back to recognize, observe, and have patience with this process can give us a sense of comfort and alleviate some of the anxiety that comes with the constant effort to adapt to and deal with the inevitability of change.