A quality shared by most resilient people is the ability to see the world as it is rather than as they wish it to be.
As a result, they understand that:
• Changing ourselves is hard, even when our health and lives may depend on it.
• Changing others is harder.
• Changing organizational culture and practices is even harder because it combines the difficulties of changing ourselves and others with the challenge of overcoming institutional inertia and active resistance.
In addition, most of us significantly underestimate what’s required to alter long-standing habits of mind and behavior in ourselves and others and to create organizational cultures of continuous improvement.
And, at the same time, we significantly overestimate the extent to which humans are rational and motivated to change because of evidence and logic.
That’s why reading a book, listening to an inspiring speaker, or attending a “research-based” workshop are almost always insufficient to produce long-term, meaningful change.
The essential elements of change
The most compelling explanations of what’s required to produce significant change are offered by Alan Deutschman in Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life and by Chip Heath and Dan Heath in Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.
Deutschman explains that people make significant and lasting changes by “relating,” “repeating,” and “reframing.”
Relate underscores the importance of sustained relationships with individuals and groups to inspire hope and provide support.
Repeat involves learning, practicing, and mastering new skills until they become habits.
And reframe means finding others ways to think about a situation. Because established frames resist facts and reasoned arguments, deep-rooted beliefs and conceptual frameworks must be identified and altered to support desired changes.
A problem, Deutschman says, is that leaders too often rely on relatively ineffective change strategies—facts (human beings are not as rational as we think we are), fear (at best it’s a short-term motivator), and force (there are many ways it can be resisted) to promote change.
Instead, successful change efforts offer a sense of hopefulness that problems can be solved through a genuine sense of community that enables the acquisition of new habits.
In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard Chip Heath and Dan Heath explain that our behavior is shaped by three forces—our intellect, our emotions, and the situations in which we find ourselves.
To explain their ideas the Heaths offer the metaphor of an elephant with a rider:
The rider is our intellect. Although modest in size compared to the elephant, it plans and directs.
The elephant is emotion. It provides the energy that creates and sustains movement.
The path is the situation or environment in which the rider and elephant find themselves. that either supports improved performance or hinders it. (For example, strong teamwork requires a “path” that includes regularly-scheduled meeting time, relevant data to make decisions and assess progress, and training in group skills.)
We promote change, the Heaths say, when we:
• create clarity of purpose and direction (influence the rider),
• engage people’s emotions (motivate the elephant), and
• create environments (shape the path) that enable rather than hinder the desired performance.
What, in your experience, are the essential elements of change in individuals and organizations?
I will be taking a sabbatical during the next few months to refresh and renew. Best wishes for an enjoyable summer (or winter if you happen to be Down Under).
