Change and Continuity: They Need to Go Together

It’s said there are only two things in life you can count on: death and taxes. I’d like to add a third – change. Change is also inevitable. To grow, develop and survive, we must evolve. Yet, unlike evolution in nature, where we see eons of slow and gradual change, the changes that affect us are usually sudden and, sometimes, unexpected. So we’re caught off-guard and unprepared.

Most humans resist change. We get attached to things we own and to groups we belong to. Psychologists call this “the mere ownership effect.” It means we tend to view things that relate to us more positively than those that don’t. This includes small things – like loving animals that start with “M” just because that’s the first letter of our name … as well as larger things, like patriotism, loving the country we live in. We see the same behavior in biology: allying with a group always results in better survival than going it alone.

Because we spend so much of our day at work, we tend to view our coworkers as our second family. We become attached to our workplace. Surprisingly this is true whether you are highly engaged at work or merely getting through the day. Your workplace is still a big part of who you are.

That’s why changes in the workplace affect employees so strongly … and why it’s important for leaders to paint a picture of their vision when changes occur. As a manager, you need to help explain why the change is needed and how the change will improve the current situation. This will help leaders recruit support for change. But the successful implementation of any change requires something else, according to research conducted by the Harvard Business Review and published in the Academy of Management Journal.

People resist change because they fear it will disrupt what they value and their familiar routine. Employees facing a change at work fear that the organization they’re part of will no longer be the same. Even when you, as part of management, explain why the change is needed, your employees worry about how drastic and far-reaching the consequences of the change will be. This is especially true when the change involves potential right-sizing, corporate buyouts or mergers. Engagement, morale, and productivity reach all-time lows.

To successfully implement a change, effective leadership and management are needed to emphasize that the central identity of the organization — who we are — will remain the same.

“Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity, there is no growth.” – C.S. Lewis

One Harvard Business Review study shows how important it is to emphasize continuity when you want to implement and gather support for change. An organization with 209 employees announced plans for a major organizational change that would involve relocations, mergers, product changes and structural changes. They measured employee support for the change through supervisor ratings of behavior. They found that leadership was better able to gain support for the planned changes when a vision of continuity was also communicated. Employees realized that the basic identity of their organization would not change. The importance of a continuity message is even greater when the uncertainty of the proposed change is higher.

Another Harvard Business Review study looked at causality. Can communicate a sense of continuity directly influence support for change?

In this study, 208 business school students received one of two versions of a message from the dean about potential curriculum changes. One version only addressed the vision of the change, while the second also included a message about the continuation of identity. All students then received one version of a second email, indicating either a low or high uncertainty of the outcome of change. To measure the effectiveness of the continuity message, this email asked the students’ help in drafting an email seeking support for the change from other students.

The results were the same as those seen in the earlier study. Students who received a message of continuity — in addition to the vision of the change — were more supportive. And the higher the uncertainty of the outcome, the more strongly the effects were felt.

Continuity is intrinsic in people’s lives. Employees go to work looking forward to the end of the workday (ironically), start the week on Monday and make plans for the weekend, create a career and save for retirement. All of us move on to the next phase — of our week or our lives — by building on the current phase.

For change leadership to succeed, keep this in mind. To overcome the natural resistance to change, emphasize your vision of the change in combination with a vision of continuity. Employees need to know the change won’t threaten their sense of identity. Only in that way, will you reduce their fear and uncertainty so they will support the change and help you succeed. Bottom line: Employees will feel some sense of control among the uncertainty that typically accompanies change.

https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-to-get-people-to-embrace-change-emphasize-what-will-stay-the-same