The Path to Effective Change
Clearing the Path for Change | Part 1
Organizational Change Management has taught us that to make an influential change in work behavior we need a big initiative. What most don’t realize is that the big initiative more often than not comes down to changing small behaviors. That’s where real change happens; when individuals decide to stop doing something the way they’ve always done it and try it a new way. It is a task that seems simple but takes a lot of vision and planning because our natural instincts are to question change, resist it, and revert back to what we know and love.
The funny thing is the thing we end up reverting back to we all recognize isn't perfect. I’ve worked with many clients who don’t love the way they currently work. They think their meetings are too long and unnecessary, they're sending files back and forth, are spending hours consolidating documents, and don't even get me started on email. They will admit it’s flawed, it’s slow, it’s frustrating. But when presented with something new, the unknown is so scary, or just the idea of trying to learn it is so exhausting, we would rather stick with the broken old.
This emotional side of us is so strong, that even when we rationally know that changing our habit would be better for us, we still don't have the strength to steer ourselves in the right direction. Jonathan Haidt, University of Virginia psychologist and author of The Happiness Hypothesis, refers to these two sides as The Elephant and The Rider. Even when our Rider knows we should be turning right, if the elephant wants to go left, we're going left. I think anyone who has ever made the statement "I'm going to start eating healthy" and then 5 minutes later is at the bottom of a Ben & Jerry's carton can relate. Why do we do that? We want the change. We want to be healthy. Unfortunately, when that craving hits, no amount of rationalization is enough. Or, to put it in business terms, we know our meetings should have agendas but when the workload piles up it's usually the first thing to go. That is why there is a third factor we need to take into consideration.
In their book, Switch, Authors Chip and Dan Heath, take the analogy further by not just looking at the Elephant and the Rider, but by factoring in the path they are on. They say, "what looks like a people problem, is often a situation problem… when you shape the "Path" you make change more likely, no matter what's happening with the Rider and the Elephant." In other words, it's not just about emotionally appealing to the elephant with inspiration on why we want to be healthy, nor is it just about showing the Rider how to diet… we need to make sure there is no ice cream in the freezer.
"Tweaking the environment is about making the right behaviors a little easier and the wrong behaviors a little harder."
Is there a change you are trying to implement in your company or your team? If there is, take a minute to consider what you can do to your path to make the ride a little smoother. Are there default settings you can implement in your technology that will make your behavior change a little easier? Have you clearly communicated expectations? Is there an app that can help automate some of what you want to do? While I cannot write to the specifics of your situation, I will be continuing this article series with a look at developing a clear path for four of the key areas where the average knowledge worker spends most of their day: meetings, collaboration, communication and focus time.
At the end of the day, if we want to run 5 miles, we still need to run 5 miles. But let's see if we can make it downhill.
