Why can’t we change our organisations? Year after year, the list of companies that no longer exist because they were unable to evolve continues to grow. It includes such household names as Sunbeam, Polaroid, Blockbuster, etc. After six decades of study, untold investment, and the best efforts of scholars, executives, and consultants, most organisational change efforts still underperform, fail, or even seem to make things worse.
This is bad news for 21st century organisations. Increasing competition, globalisation, technological changes, financial upheaval, political uncertainty, changing workforce demographics, and a global pandemic are forcing organisations to change faster and differently than ever before. Worse, there is little reason to believe the field of organisational change can be of much help. Not only is the track record of change efforts dismal — it may not be improving. Experts have reported similar results for organisational change efforts since the 1980s. Clearly, new insight is needed into how organisations can better adapt to their environments and change. This HBR review provides some interesting incites.
Although myriad factors are often cited about organisational change, the inability to engage people is the factor noted longest and most often. As organisational behavioural experts Kenneth Thompson and Fred Luthans noted almost 20 years ago, a person’s reaction to organisational change “can be so excessive and immediate, that some researchers have suggested it may be easier to start a completely new organisation than to try to change an existing one.” This phenomenon, often referred to as “human resistance to change,” is possibly the most important issue facing the field of organisational change — and one that continues to baffle scholars, consultants, and executives. So, how do we effectively engage the support and creativity of a company’s employees at the moment these attributes are most needed — during an organisational change?
One source of insight may be the field of neuroscience. The study of the brain, particularly within the field of social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience, is starting to provide some underlying insights that can be applied in the real world and, perhaps, increasingly to our understanding of how to better engage human performance and creativity during change.
At a NeuroLeadership Summit in the US, a panel discussion with senior executives and experts from The Conference Board, the Association of Change Management Professionals, Change Leaders, and Barnard College explored the connection between neuroscience and organisational change, understanding how we can effectively deal with the human resistance to change.
The discussion informed work on a new organisational change model, one that takes into account how successful change functions in a modern organisation, where work is conceptual, creative, and relational, and talent is portable. Keep in mind that there is no accepted general theory of change but rather traditional “best practice” clusters around a series of activities that have contributed to the continuing poor performance of change initiatives. These include:
Perpetual under preparation: change is always dreaded and a surprise to employees
A perceived need to “create a burning platform”: meant to motivate employees via expressed or implied threat
Leading change from the top of the organisation down: only a few individuals are actively involved in the change and either under communicate or miscommunicate with others.
Most of these ideas have implications in the field of neuroscience. For instance, the need to create a burning platform atmosphere at work can trigger a limbic response in employees. Instead of motivating people to change in a positive way, a burning platform makes them uncomfortable — thrusting change upon them. In another example, driving change from the top can trigger fear within employees because it deprives them of key needs that help them better navigate the social world in the workplace.
These needs include Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness — the foundation of the SCARF model. If out of synch, these five needs have been shown in many neuroscience studies to activate the same threat circuitry activated by physical threats, like pain.
Keeping all this in mind, given our evolutionary ability to adapt to different environments, one would have to strongly believe that we need to perhaps think about change differently. To begin, we need to think about people differently — not as commodities to be hurried and pushed around but as sources of real and powerful competitive advantage. A second step is to see change differently — not just as a perpetual crisis, but as an opportunity to be better prepared and equipped to manage organisational shakeups as a normal part of doing business, and as an opportunity to personally develop and grow.
Want to know how to more about the SCARF model and supporting the people within your organisation with psychological safety and enhanced agility?
Send me an email at michelle@bakjacconsulting.com to enquire about coaching and training to build your strategies.
Michelle Bakjac is an experienced Psychologist, Organisational Consultant, Coach, Speaker and Facilitator. As Director of Bakjac Consulting, she is a credentialed Coach with the International Coach Federation (ICF) and a member of Mental Toughness Partners and an MTQ48 accredited Mental Toughness practitioner. Michelle assists individuals and organisations to develop their Mental Toughness to improve performance, leadership, behaviour and wellbeing. You can find her at www.bakjacconsulting.com or michelle@bakjacconsulting.com
