The ongoing question for organizations, which never seems to be adequately answered, is “Why is change so hard?” This is usually quickly followed by the obvious question, “So how do I solve that?” Because there has not been a sufficient understanding of the former, we’ve never been able to routinely address the latter in practice.
Change can simply be described as moving a system (process, people, tools, and/or data) from the current as-is state (n0) to a new to-be state (n1). This is a drastic simplification, but crucial when we recognize that the current state of an organization is not a random happenstance, but rather a static state that is maintained by a collection of forces. So when we ask “Why is this change hard?” the first answer is, “Because it’s going against the existing forces.” We should never under appreciate that fact.
There are forces (people, finances, regulations, environmental changes, etc.) driving the organization in a new direction (drivers of change from n0 to n1) and other forces that push in the opposite direction and maintain the current state (which often get labeled resistors of the change). In the simplest example, you might have individuals and financial goals pushing for a new organizational structure while culture and risk concerns are pushing back. The great psychologist Kurt Lewin described this as a state of quasi-equilibrium held in place by a series of forces that act to maintain the current state. He concluded that to change the state, the forces in the direction of change must be increased, or the forces resisting the change must be reduced. To do so, we need to understand those existing forces and their relative strength, as well as understand the necessary energy that needs to be introduced into the system to alter one or more of those forces.
With this in mind, we look at the most common way organizations (unwittingly or not) create the energy needed to alter one of these forces — the creation of urgency. Most every undergraduate business student is taught the Kotter model of change in which the first step is creating a sense of urgency. Urgency creates psychological pressure, which, in this case, is an energy force that weakens the resisting forces. In effect, leadership is saying “I know this (the future state n1) seems bad, but the alternative (the current state n0) is worse.” It is an approach that relies on some of our basic psychological instincts to avoid danger (more on this later).
The thinking behind this approach is that employees inherently desire stability (something that is supported by limited evidence). Therefore, to willingly expend energy towards a change, these employees must have something that makes them feel the change is necessary, which is usually to avoid some significant pain. This ends up being about creating fear or tension to drive the change.
Urgency is certainly one way to create the energy needed to move the system into a new state, but it is not the only one. One problem with the creation of urgency is that is a very costly way to create energy. Like any psychological shock to the system, it causes a high degree of stress, often is associated with sub-optimal decision making, and over time causes employees to become numb to it. In effect, employees build up a tolerance to urgency. So while it is one valid technique, it is one fraught with problems.
Another issue with urgency is that it is an unpredictable intervention. Individual agency implies that employees react to a sense of urgency in various ways. Some may choose to expend their energy on the change, some may flee the environment (quitting), some may actually feel assaulted and become even less open to the change. Unlike our digital systems that react in a deterministic manner we can model, employees choose how they wish to respond in a model that is closer to a non-deterministic (chaotic) system.
Going back to the origins, instead of urgency, we need to think about change as the expenditure of energy. Something has to be introduced to the system that allows those driving forces to push harder or those resisting forces to be weaker, and do so in a manner which does not risk destabilizing the organization.
So to answer those seemingly simple questions, at first look, the reason change is so hard is because it is asking a complex system which is currently held in place by strong force to move into a new state. The solution requires thinking about energy and how it is created, how it is expended, and how it can be directed with individuals who possess agency.
The first question I ever heard after this explanation was, “What other ways can you create energy other than urgency?” This question suggests just how ingrained urgency is in current management and leadership thinking.
My answer? How about inspiration?
We will discuss how this impacts a system next time.