Faculty and Change Strategy

A faculty member at a large university recently described their experience learning about AI by saying it felt like being a French aristocrat learning about the guillotine. It got a laugh in the room, and it's the kind of line that stays with you precisely because it's funny and uncomfortable in equal measure.

Nobody is in genuine danger from a technology update, and yet the feeling of displacement, of something powerful and unfamiliar arriving to reorganize the world as you know it, is real enough to produce that kind of language.

Those leading change strategy who dismiss it are missing something important.

Fear Doesn't Have to Be Rational to Be Valid

Technology change in higher education rarely arrives gently. It asks people to let go of workflows they've spent years mastering, to relearn processes that once felt automatic, and to trust that something unfamiliar will eventually feel like second nature. For faculty in particular, who often have significant autonomy over how they work and deep investment in their expertise, the arrival of AI can genuinely feel like a threat to professional identity even when it isn't. The logic that "you won't be harmed by this" is technically correct and practically useless if the person in front of you is already bracing for impact.

Empathy Is a Strategic Asset, Not Just a Soft Skill

In change management, it's easy to treat resistance as a problem to solve rather than a signal worth understanding, especially when confronting resistance is literally part of the job description. But the faculty member who made the guillotine joke wasn't being irrational. They were being honest about their fear, which is actually a much better starting point than quiet disengagement. When people articulate what scares them, you have something to work with. When they go silent, you don't find out until after the rollout. Maintaining genuine empathy, the kind that doesn't quietly condescend while nodding along, is what keeps those conversations open.

What This Means for Your Change Strategy

Change management that works isn't built on convincing people their fears are wrong. It's built on understanding what's underneath the resistance and designing a path through it that respects the real disruption involved. That means listening more carefully than you communicate, involving skeptics early instead of after the fact, and staying curious about the experience of people who aren't naturally enthusiastic about what's coming. The guillotine isn't real, but the loss of familiarity and confidence is, and that's worth taking seriously.

If this kind of grounded thinking about change resonates with you, subscribe to our newsletters, Workday Student Navigator and Strategic Campus Insights, for more perspectives on making technology transitions work for the people who live inside them.