Why is Change so difficult?
The old adage says “No one likes change”. I don’t really think “the change” is the issue, I believe it’s more the process of changing. I have observed that people just don’t know how to change without disrupting their status quo and in turn make their lives better.
Reasons why change is difficult
Why does change seem to be so difficult? Because our status quo seems comfortable and we don’t really know how to go about making changes unless there is assurance that a new and better comfort will result from the proposed changes.
Company culture, rules, and environments are the result of many decisions that have been made, over a period of time, which created and maintains the status quo.
A company is started with a vision of what they want to achieve. Although some of this is verbally expressed, much of it is non-verbal. The company then populates the environment to represent a look or feel they want to embody. Policies are put in place to enable adoption the same ethos and become part of the company story. Changes that occur must support the company story. But outside of the rules and values laid down by the Human Resource department, do we all consciously know the values and beliefs, rules, politics, and relationships that consistently represent our status quo?
What do we know or believe to get us where we are? What keeps it all in place? It’s not the rules, roles, or initiatives. It’s some hard-to will affect more than a small handful of people: individuals going through change must maintain their internal criteria – beliefs, values, norms, politics, dreams, history – while making a change, even if it’s the change that is sought after.
Acknowledging a problem that must be fixed
When a problem is identified that we believe needs resolution – we tend to forget that the identified problem is part of a complete system that has functioned ‘well’ for some period of time. We assume that if a solution is presented, that others in the company will automatically embrace the solution and know what to do. This is not true. People, policies and relationships don’t change because something new is introduced: indeed at the point something new is introduced, the elements defined as problematic go into homeostasis to protect the status quo. We are working with a system here – one that has continually created consistency and comfort for the organization.
Whatever the change may be, no matter how small, before we’re ready to shift, we need to know that the change must match the criteria of what it’s replacing, or the new element will be rejected.
It is difficult to understand the complexity of a current situation or environment. The behaviors and decisions that were made through time created the unique brand.
The system we live in
A system, largely secret, unique, and idiosyncratic, continually makes choices that retain the status quo. These choices are based on unconscious data and past decisions.
How does a fish know the water is dirty? It doesn’t. Feels like home to them. How do we know we live in an outdated or counter-productive system? We don’t. Until we find some way to disengage from the system to recognize those important elements that need to be managed prior to change taking place – whether it be a new piece of equipment, or a new program, add people, move office, or even change a bad habit – we will do nothing. And, ‘nothing’ is a decision to allow the status quo to remain intact.
Before a person can change, they must discover the elements within their status quo that will need to be managed so that the change will not create a disruption. The job of supervisors is not to effect change, but to help people figure out all of the elements that must be managed to decide on and then support the change.
Facilitating change
There are a few key components to facilitate change in a company:
- Awareness -An individual or organization must know why a specific change or series of changes are needed. Why are we changing our billing system? Why do we need to implement a CRM tool?
- Desire -Either the individual or organizational members must have the motivation and desire to participate in the called for change or changes.
- Knowledge -Knowing why one must change is not enough; an individual or organization must know how to change.
- Ability -Every individual and organization that truly wants to change must implement new skills and behaviors to make the necessary changes happen successfully.
- Reinforcement -Individuals and organizations must be reinforced to sustain changes making them the new behavior, if not; an individual or organization will probably revert back to their old behavior.
Once all of the change information is defined, the group can take a comprehensive look and make informative decisions. Until then, no action can take place.
The time it takes to come up with answers is the length of the decision cycle.
The Importance of Buy-in
For an organization to achieve change effectively, it is important that individuals in the organization that will need to make modifications to their behavior exhibit buy-in. Buy-in means that the organization as a whole understands that the changes that need to be made are ultimately beneficial to both the individual and the organization. In addition, each individual and the organization as a whole will have to work hard to make the necessary behavior modifications. If an organization tries to make changes which are inherently bad or are not received positively by an organization, it will be much more difficult or close to impossible to implement these changes without significant resistance.
You can enhance buy-in by first explaining the changes you would like to make, citing issues with current procedures and then communicating the benefits for both the individual and organization.
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Change management is an often neglected and misunderstood area of Project Management. Many times our projects create change which isn’t readily embraced. Nice article, thanks!