In every sector, including higher education, change has become the defining condition of professional life. Budgets shift, opportunities change, teams reorganize and expectations evolve faster than most of us can keep up. Students, postdocs and seasoned professionals alike are being asked to adapt constantly, often without ever being taught how to do it.
As directors of career centers, our job is to spot the skills tomorrow’s leaders will need and to design ways to help them build those skills now. At the top of that list is the ability to navigate change and to help others do the same. It’s not a “nice-to-have” skill anymore; it’s part of how one leads, collaborates and makes their own work sustainable.
We’ve been discussing how to help trainees and professional colleagues negotiate change for a long time. Naledi developed the Straight A’s for Change Management framework through National Science Foundation–funded work focused on training biomedical professionals in people management and managing-up skills. Dinuka has used this approach in his own leadership practice and integrated its lessons into his work supporting trainees and professionals. Together, we wanted to share what this looks like in real life.
What’s often missing in professional skill development isn’t the outcome; it’s the process. The Straight A’s for Change Management framework offers exactly that. Built on four steps—acknowledge and accept, assess, address, and appreciate achievement—it helps people build agency: the capacity to act skillfully even when they can’t control external events.
Acknowledge and Accept
Step one is to acknowledge reality and then accept what it means to and for you.
Many people we work with, from first-year students to senior leaders, stop short of even this first step. They can acknowledge the problem—funding has been cut, hiring has slowed or their people are struggling with change—but they don’t take the harder step of acceptance.
Acceptance means internalizing that your long-standing plan or approach may no longer be viable and that you will need to adjust your goals or strategies. It can also mean accepting that you might need support or community beyond your institution to help hold this heavy truth. But this is the inflection point where agency begins: not wishing conditions were different, but accepting the need for you to think and act differently, too.
For a postdoc, acceptance might mean recognizing that a principal investigator’s funding constraints could shorten the timeline of their project. That realization could prompt them to seek alternative support, accelerate a job search or pivot their research scope. For a student, acceptance might mean realizing that since their adviser’s experience is limited to academic careers, they will need to proactively seek additional mentorship to position themselves for biotech careers.
For Dinuka, acceptance came during a period of leadership transition. The role he had taken on had quietly shifted beneath him—new expectations, new reporting lines and values that no longer aligned with what drew him to the work in the first place. He agonized over whether to stay and adapt or to acknowledge that something essential had changed. The moment he admitted that reality, uncomfortable as it was, he could finally see a path forward. Acceptance meant reclaiming his agency.
Reflection Prompts:
- What change in your environment are you resisting acknowledging?
- What might acceptance make possible that resistance is currently blocking?
- Who can help you process this shift with honesty and perspective?
Assess the Change
Once you’ve acknowledged and accepted a situation, the next step is to assess it strategically. This is where you shift from emotional reaction to analytical clarity.
A useful tool here is a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). Ask yourself:
- Strengths: What are your skills? Where can you leverage them in this situation?
- Weaknesses: Where are you vulnerable?
- Opportunities: What new directions might this open?
- Threats: What could block your goals?
Answering these questions encourages balance. Some start with weaknesses and threats; others begin with strengths and opportunities. What matters is that you consider all four dimensions.
It’s also helpful to share your SWOT with a mentor or trusted colleague. Instead of laying out your situation and asking, “What should I do?” you can say, “Here’s how I’m assessing my situation. Can you help me identify what I might be missing?” Tools like a SWOT provide structure for both your reflection and your conversations with those who support you.
When Dinuka reached this stage, he turned to trusted mentors, colleagues and family members to triangulate perspectives. His SWOT involved asking, what strengths could he draw on if he stayed? Where were the risks if he left? What opportunities might emerge if he stepped away? What threats might come from doing so? Speaking these questions aloud prevented him from getting stuck in his own echo chamber and restored clarity. Assessment gave his uncertainty a shape.
Reflection Prompts:
- How fully have you mapped the situation you’re in—emotionally and strategically?
- Which perspective (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) do you tend to overemphasize or neglect?
- Who could provide an outside view to help you see what you might be missing (trusted mentors, colleagues, friends or family members)?
Address the Change
To address change is to use what you’ve learned to respond skillfully.
Sometimes it starts by envisioning your best possible outcome six to 12 months out and working backward from there. Other times it means short-term triage, only figuring out the next logical step rather than solving everything at once. That might mean updating your CV, signing up for job boards or reaching out to a mentor.
One postdoc Naledi worked with wanted to keep his career options open. In response, he began carving out one hour a week to set up informational interviews with alumni in biotech and communication careers, learning which skills were in demand. With that insight, he added a side project that strengthened his technical skills, focused on service and leadership opportunities to communicate science, and kept his network apprised of his progress.
In Dinuka’s case, addressing the change meant testing what was still possible before making a decision. He clarified expectations with new leadership, re-aligned priorities and gave the situation space to evolve. When it became clear that the trajectory no longer matched his values or goals, he made the intentional choice to step away. That decision, though difficult, came from a place of calm rather than crisis.
Addressing change when the future is unclear means shifting from awareness to iterative forward motion, using your definition of integrity as your compass.
Reflection Prompts:
- What is one small, concrete step you can take this week to move forward?
- If you imagine the best version of this situation a year from now, what would need to happen between now and then?
- How can you act with integrity even when you can’t control outcomes?
Appreciate Achievements
The final step, often overlooked, is to appreciate achievements. Many wait for a situation to resolve before celebrating. But change often unfolds over a long arc, and there may never be a moment when everything “returns to normal.”
That means recognizing that even small wins are a big deal. Did you talk to a friend to process your situation? Celebrate. Did you update your CV? Celebrate. Did you gain greater clarity about your direction? Celebrate!
Shifting from celebrating only outcomes (a publication, a job offer, a raise) to also celebrating progress, milestones and effort helps sustain momentum and motivation.
When Dinuka finally left that role, he felt grounded. He appreciated the mentors who guided him, the colleagues who supported him and the lessons learned in difficulty. He celebrated not the exit itself, but the growth that came with it. That sense of gratitude transformed what could have been resentment into renewal.
Appreciating achievements is not self-indulgent; it is strategic. It focuses attention on what you have accomplished despite uncertainty, which builds confidence to keep going.
Reflection Prompts:
- What progress have you made in the past month that you haven’t acknowledged?
- Whom can you thank or recognize for supporting your journey through change?
- How do you remind yourself that growth often looks like struggle before success?
Why Straight A’s Matter
Taken together, the A’s—acknowledge and accept, assess, address and appreciate achievement—form a road map for agency. We may not control personal setbacks, professional disappointments, shifting organizational priorities, unfair practices or political turbulence. But with every new challenge, we can start responding intentionally, identifying where we can still move.
Our experiences reinforced that agency is learned through practice. The Straight A’s provide both structure and language for something many of us attempt intuitively: turning uncertainty into direction. The framework accepts complexity and teaches us to meet it with clarity and integrity.
By practicing the Straight A’s, we build the muscles of agency and leadership. If we teach the next generation of leaders these approaches as part of their training and development, they will be prepared to lead skillfully in a world where the only constant is change.
Naledi Saul is director of the Office of Career and Professional Development at the University of California, San Francisco, She coaches and frequently presents on people management and managing-up skills for higher education and biomedical audiences.
Dinuka Gunaratne (he/him) has worked across several postsecondary institutions in Canada and the U.S. and is a member of several organizational boards, including Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada, CERIC—Advancing Career Development in Canada, and the leadership team of the Administrators in Graduate and Professional Student Services knowledge community with NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.
They are both members of the Graduate Career Consortium, an organization that provides an international voice for graduate-level career and professional development leaders.
