Which change do you like most?
The Change Question: What’s your preferred type of change?
Successful transformation needs a lot of things to go well.
You’re typically trying to implement your organizational and structural changes on the one hand, and asking people to behave differently on the other.
They’re both called “change” but the truth is they’re quite different disciplines.
It’s not dissimilar to the relationship between Newtonian and quantum physics. Yes, they’re both called “physics.” Yes, between them, they describe the universe. But … they don’t actually seem to be that compatible.
You’ll have a preference between them, a bias towards the relative importance of one over the other.
That’s fine, if you’re aware of it.
But if not, you may find yourself “playing to your strengths” and overcommitting to the catalyst of change you know best and find most comfortable.
If you know your preferred type of change, you can check that you’re not over-indexing on what’s most familiar.
Pod Wisdom: Pim de Morree on designing change experiments
Pim de Morree, from the Change Signal episode "You Don’t Need 99% of Change Management Models":
“When it comes to what makes a good experiment to run in an organizational transformation, I'd say a couple of things.
One, keep it kind of small and simple. In many cases, when you ask people, “What would you like to change?” it's always the big things that are way beyond their control.
So if you're working in one specific department, you don't want to start completely reducing the hierarchy in the entire organization or getting rid of a policy that's dictated by another department.
Start smaller because most influence can be had in what's happening in your team or your department and experiment with that. Show some progress and then start, to bring other people on board with this transformation.
And then make sure it's also not too lengthy.
It depends on the focus, of course, but make sure it's a short timeline such as one to three months.
That way you have enough energy to complete the whole thing, and then properly evaluate it. Then you can then run your second experiment. If it takes too long, people just get lost in either complexity or they just get bored with it and don't have the energy anymore.”
Listen to my full conversation with Pim now
Pim de Morree is co-founder of Corporate Rebels. Corporate Rebels has been recognized by Thinkers50 as a leading practitioner on change, in particular about self-managing organizations.
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The Last Word: Richard Rorty
“A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.”
~ Richard Rorty