The three failure modes of change

Whatever you might call your change programme or initiative, be it a Lean Deployment, Continuous Improvement Initiative, Business Transformation, or one of numerous other titles, I can guarantee that you have, at some time, suffered from organisational resistance. That part is indisputable and a fact of any change process but, what is most important, is how you dealt with it.

Whilst there are many causes of a change initiative failing, I can boil it down to three key issues:

• 01Tick box change management
• 02Ignoring primal instincts
• 03Blinking too soon

Tick box change management

The first of the pitfalls is to manage change like it's a project, arming yourself with the 'tools of the trade', such as Kotter's 8-steps change model and the Kübler-Ross change curve, creating a communication plan, running workshops, etc.

This is all well and good but the key to change is the engagement of people, and running a change management initiative like it's a project will result in, metaphorically speaking, the same outcome as painting by numbers; a painting, without a doubt, but not something that people will take much joy from.

Change requires a certain je ne se quoi, an ability to use the models of change but in a way that isn't mechanistic or procedural, requires a team of people with different abilities, and is led by a change leader who knows how to lead the organisation through the perilous waters of change. This leader understands that an organisation consists of a group of individuals with their own needs, wants, desires, fears, goals, beliefs, thoughts, ideas and values, and knows how to guide them to the destination that the organisation has decided that it wants to reach.

However, the real magic in great change leadership is that the destination will be one that the members of the organisation have helped to determine; a beautiful and colourful painting of the future that they all recognise as a joyful place to reach - A true masterpiece!

Ignoring primal instincts

The second common issue is for the change leadership to ignore the primal instincts of human beings. These instincts, harboured in the primal brain, are responsible for the success of our ancestors in surviving across millennia, but in the modern world play a significant, often negative, role in the way that we respond to change.

You can take the person out of the Stone Age, not the Stone Age out of the person. ~ Harvard Business Review (August 1988)

As human beings, we often observe change as an existential threat of sorts, and the primal brain responds without language or reason but with emotion, attaching many of its past negative experiences to the change being presented. The mistake that many of us make in our response to these emotional reactions is to act in a rational, well organised, planned manner, using communication methods steeped in logic and reason.

We're then surprised when this doesn't work, our audience appearing to be irrational in their response to our very well thought-out, obviously good for everyone message. However, they haven't heard our message as we designed it, filtered as it is by the emotional, pre-historic responses of the original part of their brains.

The approach to address these responses requires patience and ongoing, consistent communications, their inclusion and co-creation of the change vision, giving our people the opportunity for their emotional response to lower and their rational thinking to kick-in. If we don't find a way to do this, the emotional, self-preservation response will persist, and be reinforced as our colleagues discuss and share their fears and negative ideas about the change with each other, perpetuating and heightening the collective anxiety.

A model that really helps me through this process, and that I publicise often, is the Bovis-cycle, the BTFA (Believe-Think-Feel-Act) model, which helps to elegantly explain the impact that this emotional response has on the logical deployment of change. It demonstrates the interactive and simultaneous elements of the human emotional response that are significantly impacting what might seem patently logical and reasonable to the leaders of the change.

If you question this, think about some well-known examples, such as the adoption of the COVID-19 vaccine by certain groups and communities, global action against climate change, equal rights for all, etc, which are all easily explained from a logical perspective and patently difficult to rationally argue against, yet are perennially mired in the emotions of many decision makers.

Blinking too soon

Regardless of your success in avoiding the first two failure modes, every individual, and the organisation collectively, will experience the Kübler-Ross change curve and, at some point, perhaps even multiple times, find themselves falling into the 'valley of doom', where they feel most weighed down and challenged by the change. This is a dangerous time for the change programme, as this will be the peak period for resistance and for challenges about making a change to the approach, watering it down, or even stopping.

This doesn't mean that you shouldn't pivot or adapt your approach in response to feedback. That would be a stubborn approach to change, would certainly result in failure mode #2 (and possibly #1), and would exhibit an inability to learn from, and adapt to, the change.

What it does mean though is that you should be careful not to 'blink too soon' and lose focus on the destination, as the voices of those most struggling with the change, and responding with their primal brains, are the loudest and most disruptive of the change. Calm heads must prevail and any adaption to the approach needs to be grounded in true and real reasons, rather than an attempt to keep people happy.

Responding to the voices of our colleagues is critical in the change process, although the knack to this is ensuring that any modifications to the approach are on the basis of problem solving and learning, not indulgence. Remember that change is difficult, by definition it is uncomfortable and undesirable for many people, who would love to maintain the status quo and to put on hold the external influences that necessitate the need for change. Many organisations have fallen foul to this, with big names such as Polaroid, Blockbuster, RIM (Blackberry), amongst others, failing to adapt to the change. Therefore, remember that:

If your change management is going well; you're not doing it right!

Understand and accept the discomfort, the friction, the attrition of those unable or unwilling to be part of the journey, and remember that you are not immune to the change curve just because you're leading it; you'll experience the emotional roller-coaster that your colleagues are and you need to take this into account in your decision making.

Conclusion

The three failure modes of change are essential to understand if you're going to be successful in leading the change that your organisation inevitably requires. No article on this subject would be complete without the cliché of saying that the only constant in life is change, but it is clichéd for a reason, and therefore the success, or not, of your organisation will be dependent upon your ability to successfully navigate the deep, perilous waters of change.