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Why We Need to Change

9th July 20209th July 2020 jocando Leave a comment

taking a picture of an old woman on a smartphone

As humans we are constantly adapting to our environment. But it’s clear from what I’ve said about the brain that changing just one person (ourselves) can be scary and difficult. So what about if an entire team, organisation or society needs to change? That means every single person in that group needs to shift.

There’s a vast array of literature on ‘change management’ and a whole industry built on it. We’re regularly told that between 50 and 75% of organisational change initiatives fail. The cost of making changes and the cost of failure can be immense. No wonder, then, that companies spend a vast amount of money on change management consultancy (around $10 billion a year according to the Boston Consultancy Group).

So what’s going on? Why do we have to keep ‘changing’ and how do you decide what needs to change, if anything?

Change is inevitable

Like it or not, our environment is changing all the time. Managers talk about leading in a VUCA world – one that’s Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous – and there’s debate about whether the pace of change is increasing, but it certainly feels that way. We’ve all seen big changes in our lifetime.

Changes in Technology

Just think about how we listen to music. I grew up with vinyl records, then tapes and Walkmans and Ghetto blasters, then CDs and portable CDs, then mini-disks, now MP3 players, and now it’s on my mobile phone or tablet with wireless headphones. Social media didn’t exist 20 years ago and now it’s ubiquitous. How did we manage without it? The rate of technological change seems to be increasing and every time there’s a change, we have to adapt and learn something new.

Changes in Society

We’re living longer. Improvements in medicine and living conditions mean that half of babies born now will live to be over 100.

But many companies and governments are still working on a 3-stage life model. We get educated when we’re young, we work for 45 years, then we retire. But that’s unsustainable if we’re all living longer. We can’t afford to retire at 65 if we’re going to live to 100, and we will need to re-skill and shift careers more often. This is causing tension.

And the makeup of the workforce has changed. There are more women in work and dual-income couples with children. For many the Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 model doesn’t work well. Employees are demanding more flexibility, and a more educated workforce want more meaning in their work lives.

All this has a big influence on how we live and work. Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott identify we are now shifting into a multi-stage life. This means more change, more transitions, more breaks, education across the lifespan and more flexibility:

3 stage model of 'education-work-retirement' moving to a multi-stage model — Image from: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-corporate-implications-of-longer-lives/

Changes in Work

Whole industries are being disrupted as new competitors emerge. Just think about Uber disrupting the taxi industry, or AirBnB disrupting the hotel industry. And AI is threatening to remove jobs currently done by humans. This has knock-on effects with people being pushed out of jobs and having to retrain.

Technological changes allow many of us to work from anywhere, anytime. The rise of the gig economy has brought flexibility and autonomy for many but also financial insecurity.

Even in a ‘stable’ career like medicine there is constant change, with a need for re-education and learning as new techniques and medicines appear.

Managing and Leading Change

So the need for change is clear as we have to adapt to the inevitable changes going on in our environment. The human brain is designed for survival – to avoid threats and seek rewards. And organisations and societies, too, need to constantly adapt in order to survive and thrive.

Managing or leading change in organisations has huge implications for the individuals working in those organisations. Over the next few posts I’ll introduce some tools and models used in managing planned change. But we should always remember that at a basic level, organisations and teams are made up of individual human beings and knowing how individual humans work will make all the difference.

References

Gratton, L. and Scott, A. (2016) The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, London: Bloomsbury

Changing Habits

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In the previous post I explained how the brain develops ‘habit loops’ to conserve energy. A habit loop consists of 3 steps: a cue, the routine, and a reward. Being aware of what is triggering your habits and routines is the first step to making a change.

A habit develops when you repeat the same choices. So in order to change the habit we need to make different choices until a new or different habit is formed.

In the example below, every morning after you arrive at work you go to the cafeteria first, buy a coffee and take it back to your desk. But this is getting expensive, and you’re trying to cut down on caffeine. You want to change the habit, but it’s automatic.

Cues

If you want to change a habit, you need to identify the cue. What is triggering this behaviour? Research suggests that there are five possible categories for the cue, which are:

Location – where are you when the urge hits? What can you see?
Time – does it happen at a regular time?
Emotional State – does it happen when you are tired? Angry? Sad?
Other People – who else is around?
Immediately preceding action – do you always do this after something else?

So in the current example, you can see several possible cues. You always go to the cafeteria for a coffee:

at work (location)
when you arrive (immediately preceding action), which is usually
at 8.30am (time)

So if you want to change your habit, you need to look at these more closely. Do you go for a coffee if you don’t arrive till later in the day? What happens at the weekend or if you work from home? Is it time or location?

Reward

It’s also worth experimenting with the reward. What is the actual reward you’re getting? What happens if you still go to the café but buy a green tea instead? Or what if you bring in a flask of coffee, avoid the café and go direct to your desk. Are you trying to avoid starting work? Do you want to chat to colleagues in the café before you start? Is it the taste of the coffee? Or something else?

Once you better understand the cue and reward, try keeping the cue, but changing the routine or reward.

Have a look at this video to see how Charles Duhigg changed his afternoon cookie habit.

Starting a new habit.

You can also use the idea of cues and rewards to create a new, good habit.

Set the cue and reward and make a plan. For example:

At 9am (cue)
I will put on my trainers and go for a 20-minute run (routine).
When I get back I’ll have a piece of chocolate (reward).

And actually, you only need the chocolate reward while you’re developing the habit. After lots of repetitions, the chocolate reward will no longer be needed. The routine is reward itself.

Your turn

Give it a try. Think of one thing you’d like to change, or a new habit you’d like to start. Let me know how you get on!

Further Reading

How Habits Work – excerpt from the book ‘The Power of Habit’ by Charles Duhigg

It’s just habit

29th June 20204th July 2020 jocando Leave a comment

In the previous post I explained that, in order to conserve energy, the brain turns things we do repeatedly into habits, so we can do the actions without having to think.

It’s worth pausing here and learning a bit more about habits, as so much individual and organisational change involves us changing our behaviour and habits in some way.

Researchers have shown that 40-45% of the decisions we make every day are actually habits – we don’t make a conscious decision at all. And anyone who’s tried to start a new positive habit (like exercising, healthy eating or meditating) or change an existing habit, will know just how easily we can slip back into our usual way of doing things.

Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit explains how researchers have identified the habit process as a 3-step loop:

A cue, that tells the brain to go into automatic mode, and which habit to use
The routine – which can be physical, mental or emotional
A reward – which helps the brain decide if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.

Diagram showing loop of cue, habit and reward — © Charles Duhigg

In this example, the cue could be ‘arriving at work’, the routine is you ‘go to the cafeteria to get a coffee’, and the reward is you get to chat to your colleagues in the cafe before you start the working day. (In the brain, the actual reward is the dopamine that is released.)

Over time, and with repetition, the loop becomes more and more automatic. And over time, the brain begins to anticipate the reward, releasing dopamine at the thought of it, and therefore there is a craving for the reward, which keeps the habit going.

Change requires people to concentrate until they have adapted to new cues and routines, and this takes energy. So knowing about habit loops can help us change our habits or develop new ones.

Don’t Make me Think!

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Our brain works against when we go through change. It’s not just that change feels threatening. Change also takes extra effort. Changing requires us to overcome our usual habits and learn and do things differently. This means we have to stop and consciously think about what we’re doing, which requires the brain to use more energy.

Our brain uses a lot of energy; about 20% of the body’s energy requirements are taken up by the brain. In particular, the pre-frontal cortex (the ‘thinking’ part of the brain) needs a lot of fuel. So, in order to save energy, the brain takes what we do regularly and stores them as habits in the basal ganglia, which is more energy-efficient.

Take a look at this video for a brief explanation:

Much of what we do every day is habit – we do things automatically, without thinking. It’s easy – we don’t have to think. Even complex things, like driving, or riding a bike. Remember how much you had to concentrate when you were learning? And now you can do it so easily, you often get to where you want to go without realising how you got there.

At the beginning of the Covid19 pandemic as we went into lockdown, many people seemed to be complaining about tiredness and about not being able to get much done as they did before. But this is not surprising. Our daily routines were interrupted and we all had to use our thinking brains more to figure out what to do and learn new routines.

We need to remember that, and give ourselves and others a break, when going through change.

Don’t forget your SCARF

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As I’ve explained in previous posts, the brain treats interpersonal rewards and threats as if it was a matter of survival. So knowing about how the brain works can help us recognise when and why our threat response is triggered in social situations. It can also help us figure out how to move more towards a reward state.

And more than this, if you lead or manage people, it can help you to understand why others react in the way they do, and help you empathise, because you appreciate that it’s just the brain doing its job to protect us.

One useful model to help you remember the social situations that trigger the threat and reward response is David Rock’s SCARF model. Rock (2008) identifies 5 domains, which are:

Status – we feel good when we have higher status, when people look up to us. Conversely if someone puts you down, you feel bad as you have lost status in the group.
Certainty –the brain wants certainty and we feel threatened when things are uncertain
Autonomy – we like to be in control and make our own decisions, and we dislike having that taken away
Relatedness – we like to feel like we belong, and it hurts if we feel excluded
Fairness – we react strongly if we feel things are unfair, and feel good if we think things are fair

If we look at each of the five domains, it becomes clear just how threatening an organisational change can be, and therefore potentially how stressful or damaging to employees.

Consider a reorganisation or restructuring, for example. If your job is under threat, your status may be threatened. Perhaps you might lose your job, or be demoted. Restructuring introduces uncertainty which can continue for some time. Decisions are made from above, meaning you feel you have no autonomy over what’s happening. Your work group may be broken up, meaning you lose your colleagues and sense of belonging. And perhaps decisions are made that we deem are unfair – why has this person got the job, not me?

But conversely, the SCARF model can be used to help managers make the whole process less stressful and easier for all involved. Consider each domain and how you can reduce the threat and increase the reward. How can you reduce the uncertainty? Give people some autonomy? Ensure that things are fair? Help people connect with each other and improve the sense of belonging?

Whatever the organisation is doing, you as a manager can support your team when going through change, to make the experience less threatening, and more rewarding.

References:

Rock, D. (2008) ‘SCARF: A Brain-Based Model for Collaborating With and Influencing Others‘, Neuroleadership Journal, 1, 1-9.

The need to belong

10th June 202010th June 2020 jocando Leave a comment

I mentioned in the previous post that humans are social creatures – belonging to a group was necessary for our survival as a species. And our survival mechanism – the threat and reward response – is therefore also triggered by social interactions.

You may have been taught Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at some point. It’s usually shown as a pyramid, with basic needs such as food and shelter at the bottom, and higher needs such as esteem nearer the top. The suggestion is that the lower needs must be satisfied before you can attend to the needs further up the pyramid.

maslow's needs pyramid — ©SimplyPsychology.org

In the pyramid, ‘belonging’ and social needs comes half way up, after physiological needs and safety needs. However, neuroscience is telling us that ‘belonging’ is a fundamental human need. When people feel excluded, the same activity in the brain is seen as when people experience physical pain. It hurts. As David Rock (2009) notes:

“…people who feel betrayed or unrecognized at work — for example, when they are reprimanded, given an assignment that seems unworthy, or told to take a pay cut — experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful and painful as a blow to the head.”

Organisations are social systems – we belong to teams, departments, branches, professions and whole organisations. If your manager thumped you, you’d rightly demand compensation! Yet, the way we treat each other can also cause pain. (Or, of course, make us feel good.) We need to be more mindful of that.

References:

Rock, D. (2009) “Managing with the Brain in Mind”, Strategy+Business, Issue 56, Autumn 2009

It’s not fair!

6th June 20206th June 2020 jocando Leave a comment

In previous posts I explained that the brain is geared to seek reward and avoid threat, and the threat response is both stronger and lasts longer.

The amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for initiating the fight-flight-freeze response) is very sensitive and triggered easily. The trouble is, the brain can’t tell the difference between a genuine life-threatening situation and something more benign. These days, we’re pretty safe from most natural predators. But humans evolved to be social creatures and belonging to a group is important to us. We’re more likely to have the threat response triggered in social situations – being put down in a meeting, for example, or someone offering to give us ‘feedback’.

Fairness

We’re finely attuned to when things are ‘fair’ – if we feel we are being treated differently to other people in the group. When we perceive things to be unfair, there is a strong reaction in the limbic system. (And conversely, dopamine is released if we feel something is ‘fair’). Take a look at this 3-minute video to see how our cousins (monkeys) behave when things aren’t fair:

The monkey was keenly aware he wasn’t being paid the same as the other monkey and reacted accordingly! So just think how this plays out in organisations. And you wonder why the gender pay gap makes women angry?

And at times of organisational change, there’s plenty of opportunity for situations to arise that employees may deem as ‘unfair’. Why did that person get the job and not me? Why am I being laid off or demoted? Why can’t I have the desk next to the window? It’s incredibly important to ensure processes are fair and objective, to explain how decisions were made, and to enable conversations to be had when things are perceived as unfair.

Uncertainty is scary

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Our brain is trying to protect us and it likes to be able to predict things. If it can predict what will happen, it can help us avoid harm.

Being able to predict things is also efficient – we can make decisions quicker without having to think every situation through. We can do things on autopilot and save mental energy.

In times of uncertainty, our brains cannot predict what will happen and we feel uncomfortable. Our brain uses energy trying to go through all the possible futures there may be. The Covid19 pandemic has raised the threat/stress levels for most people, not just because of the real physical dangers, but because of the uncertainty it brings. Will I still have a job next month? Can I survive financially? When can things get back to normal?

Studies have shown we feel better having a certain negative future than an uncertain one. For example, a study by Wiggins et al (1992) showed that people with parents who had Huntingdon’s disease, and who therefore might have inherited it themselves, were better off having the test and finding out for sure, one way or the other, rather than live with the uncertainty of not knowing.

And this is one of the main reasons organisational change can be so threatening. When a change is announced our expected future is disrupted, our brains become unable to predict, and this sends us into the threat response. In times of change you need people to be working at their best, making good decisions and finding the best way forward, but the threat response means their minds are distracted and their thinking is impaired. Scarlett (2019) describes it like this:

“The adult brain in a threat response is much like that of a teenager – quick to get angry and emotional, hard to reason with. So an organization going through change is like an organization being run by a group of teenagers.”

Organisations can counter this by creating as much certainty as possible. Give a clear timeline for what you’re planning to do and when, for example, and stick to it. And make the process quick, to lessen the time people are in this uncertain state.

So if you’re a leader, be empathetic to the problems uncertainty causes for the human brain and do what you can do to create more certainty for those around you.

References

Scarlett, H. (2019) Neuroscience for Organizational Change: An Evidence based Practical Guide to Managing Change, 2^nd ed., London: Kogan Page Ltd

Wiggins, S et al (1992) “The psychological consequence of predictive testing for Huntington’s disease”, New England Journal of Medicine, 327 (20), pp 1401–05

Why change is stressful

1st June 202025th May 2020 jocando Leave a comment

To understand why change can be stressful, I first need to give a brief biology lesson about how the brain works.

Our brain’s purpose is to keep us alive. To do that, it predominantly relies on two systems: seek reward and avoid threat.

You probably already know about these. The reward system makes us feel good, and includes the release of chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin. A mild change can be rewarding. We like a bit of novelty – to explore and learn new things.

Our threat or stress response is known as the ‘fight-flight-freeze’ response. Adrenalin and cortisol are released, triggering physiological changes such as increased heart rate and focussed vision. Take a look at this video for more.

Threat is more powerful than reward

The threat response is far more powerful than the reward response. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. We can survive without finding food for a while, but it just takes one threat to kill us.

So in order to avoid threats and gain rewards, the brain is constantly on the lookout for changes in our environment. If things are as expected, we feel calm. But if our brain detects change, we are wired to go on alert and assume the worst until proven otherwise.

So it’s frustrating when leaders say their employees should be more resilient when faced with change. They’re human, and our brains are hardwired to see change as threatening. We need to remember and be empathetic to that.

All change is not created equal

29th May 202024th May 2020 jocando Leave a comment

board game pieces with different facial expressions

In the last post I talked about change load and change fatigue when there’s just too much change in a short period of time. Following on from this, it’s clear that change is experienced at the individual level – a small change might mean a minor adjustment for you but might be overwhelming for someone else.

Britt Andreatta in her book ‘Wired to Resist’ takes up this point. I love her ideas as she has developed some visual tools to help you really think about the effect of changes on you and your team/organisation. You can listen to her explaining some of her ideas in this 10-minute video:

To start, she states that the effect of the change on any individual depends on four factors:

The time it takes for that person to get used to the change
The amount of disruption it causes them
The total number of changes they’re managing
How fast the changes are coming

Bringing the first two factors together gives you the ‘change matrix’.

So if the disruption the change causes is small, and the time it takes to get used to the change is small (‘time to acclimation’), then you can consider this to be ‘green’ – the effect will probably be small.

But if disruption is high and it takes a lot of time to get used to the change, the change can be classed as ‘red’.

Individuals can then place whatever change is planned on this matrix.

But as Andreatta outlines, there are other factors in play here. You’re going to react differently depending on whether you chose the change and if you want the change.

And we also have to consider our earlier idea of change load. When changes come together and start overlapping, their effect changes. Two ‘orange’ changes may become a darker orange, and eventually a red. If you stack lots of changes on top of each other, you may meet or exceed your limits.

And we need to remember as individuals that organisational change overlaps with life changes. If your employee is going through a big life change at the moment, organisational changes are going to have a bigger effect (and vice versa).

Planning with the effects of change in mind

The book goes on to outline a new model to help managers plan changes in their organisation. But for now, what I love about this is that it shows managers in the organisation that they have some tools and some control, indeed some responsibility, for managing changes so their staff aren’t overloaded.

In recent years, we have seen high and increasing stress levels at work and the response has often seemed to push the responsibility onto the individual employee – resilience training, yoga classes, meditation classes, and so on. But companies can be more aware of all the changes across their organisation and track them. Is someone noticing the fact that a massive IT rollout is happening at the same time as an office move and restructuring for one particular department? Is an individual manager noticing that a team member is moving house at the same time as her role changes?

Organisations are made up of people. As humans we can adapt, but we also have to work within the limitations of the technology we’re built with – our brains. I’ll talk more about the brain in the next few posts.