The Transformation Fast-track: 4 Critical Success Factors

 “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” Andy Warhol 

In the fast-paced world of work, transformational change is more of a ‘must’ today than at any point in history. We are facing some undeniable accelerators of change with advances in technology and automation leading to a world where eventually 40% of all current jobs will be redundant. 

Coping with change is a crucial life skill – particularly at work. After all, we spend more time at work (34% of our lives) than any other activity we engage in between birth and death. Therefore, we can become tremendously attached to our work routines, as these are the most familiar and reassuring behaviour patterns we engage in. 

How we manage the collision between the opposing forces of (1) our need for a degree of stability and predictability in our work routines and (2) the largely unstoppable acceleration of change in the workplace provides the central question, which every leader responsible for transformational change must grapple with.

The Accelerating Pace of Change…

‘Change is the only constant in life.’ Heraclitus 535 BC

Leaders are regularly challenged by a range of change management pressures such as: staying ahead of the competition by implementing new innovations at a faster rate than competitors; addressing workforce shortages by on-boarding of an increasing number of fresh and inexperienced people to fit in to local culture and perform at a high level quickly and effectively; and for larger organisations with an increasing number of virtual and project teams, getting a consistent organisation-wide culture aligning vision, action and ways of working together. 

With so many different changes needing to be implemented, it is no wonder many leaders struggle with change management strategies. Consider the following statements we hear from leaders about their difficulties with change:

“We introduced those changes months ago, yet still everyone is claiming they were never told and don’t understand why we did it.’” 

“Staff say to each other ‘What, another change? We’ll simply wait this out until it goes away!’” 

“They still won’t give me (or each other) honest feedback when I ask them despite the fact their previous not-so-good manager left a long time ago.”

“Changing the culture in any lasting way is impossible with all the temporary or casual positions – just as we start making progress key people leave and we have to start all over again.” 

Managers are incredibly frustrated and confused by these responses but for us, as workplace psychologists, these are entirely understandable responses which are straight forward to address once we have recognised the unmet needs that sit beneath these problems…

Sustainable Change: The Four Success Factors

Take a moment now to think about the last change you implemented in your organisation and ask yourself the following questions...

Did this change genuinely reduce staff pain and/or increase pleasure? Did you expose your staff to the idea 20 times and then give them a personal experience 3 times before expecting commitment? Did you create some simple changes to relevant structures and procedures to make the new change the easiest and most logical thing to do? And, did you allow twice as long as you had planned to expect results before you threw your hands up in frustration and declared it a failure? 

These simple questions highlight the scientific principles we need to understand in order to successfully navigate the world of organisational change. Whilst there is a massive amount of research and theory to digest if we are to comprehensively understand the science of organisational change, we can short-cut the process by concentrating on understanding the four most important human factors needed to fast-track sustainable workplace change. 

Success Factor 1 - Reduce Pain & Increase Pleasure

“The easiest way to get people to do the right thing is to make the right thing the easiest thing to do…” Behavioural Psychology

For people to become genuinely interested in your change initiative, they will need to feel a degree of pain to stay as they are and also believe that what you’re offering will reduce pain and increase pleasure. 

The Pain/ Pleasure Principle (Behavioural Psychology) 

Since ancient times punishments and rewards have been used to maintain law and order in societies. This created a powerful expectation in the minds of citizens in relation to the consequences of good and bad behaviour. Ancient philosophers have also discussed and debated our instincts for pleasure seeking through discourse around short-range and long-range hedonism. Over the last hundred years, many different branches of research psychology have explored the usefulness of this concept in changing human behaviour. 

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalytic psychology, put forward the idea that the mind seeks pleasure and avoids pain in his Project for a Scientific Psychology of 1895. Freud called this idea the 'pleasure/pain principle’ which describes the instinctual seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain in order to satisfy biological and psychological needs. 

In the early 1900s, Behavioural Psychologists, such as Ivan Pavlov and John Watson, explored the use of pain and pleasure interventions linked to neutral stimuli to create emotional responses. This is the process commonly referred to as psychological conditioning. 

The discovery of this ‘conditioning’ process became a central pillar of behaviour modification where positive and negative experiences (i.e., pleasure and pain) were linked to either desirable or undesirable behaviour. These principles are now foundations behind a multitude of different treatment approaches including recovery from psychological disorders such as depression and anxiety, as well as foundation principles in the design of consumer psychology strategies such as marketing, weight loss, fitness etc. 

Pain/Pleasure & Workplace Change 

In simplest terms, the pain/pleasure principle applied to change management would suggest that for people to become genuinely interested in your product or initiative, they would need to feel a degree of pain to stay as they are and also believe that your offering will reduce pain and increase pleasure. 

Examples of integrating the pleasure/pain principle into workplace change initiatives include: 

• Making a new procedure more enjoyable using rewards, stimulus and praise. 
• Re-engineering older procedures to be slower and more difficult to use. 
• Providing training and incentive programs linked to the use of a new procedure. 
• Using ‘change champions’ to actively role model positive engagement with change.
• Openly reminding people of the normality of short-term pain for long-term gain where new procedures do require some time and adjustment. 

Success Factor 2 - Structure Enables Behaviour

“Changing structures enables new behaviours but not vice versa” Applied Behaviour Analysis

Changing the structure or environment people work in can fast-tack changes in behaviour when we make the new behaviour the easiest thing to do. Alternately, people may aspire to changing their behaviour and even attempt to adopt new behaviour but unless the structure in the environment supports these changes, the result will not last (Applied Behaviour Analysis).

Structure Enables Behaviour (Applied Behaviour Analysis - ABA)

One of the most obvious (yet often ignored) factors explaining why change fails is that the environment around the behaviour supports the old way, not the new way.

It is easy to see this in the diagram opposite, that people take the short cut instead of following the path because it is quicker and more convenient. If we tried to change this short cut behaviour without actually modifying the design of the environment it operates in, our change would invariably fail. 

This same principle explains many change failures in therapy because we simply do not understand people’s behaviour in their natural environment and so miss the cues that created it in the first place. Thomas Sasz and R.D Laing highlighted the power of understanding the environment in their classic study on Sanity, Madness and the Family where they showed how seemingly insane behaviour in children was entirely sane when we saw the difficult social environments they lived in.

Moreover, fixing the family environment was the main trigger of recovery as opposed to individual therapy itself. The popular phrase ‘insanity is a sane reaction to an insane world’, was derived from this work, as was much of the modern behaviour therapy that underpins positive parenting strategies being utilised today. Understanding behaviour and its connection with the environment and then modifying the environment to modify the behaviour is one of the powerful ideas that come from Applied Behaviour Analysis. 

Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is a scientific discipline concerned with analysing the principles of learning theory and systematically applying this technology to change behaviour. Whilst there are similarities between ABA and behaviour modification, discussed in the previous section, there is a very important difference, which is that behaviour modification approaches and attempts to change behaviour without clarifying the relevant behaviour/ environment interactions. In contrast, ABA tries to change behaviour by first assessing the functional relationship between a targeted behaviour and the environment. This approach often seeks to develop replacement behaviours, which serve the same function as the aberrant behaviours. When it comes to workplace change, human factors and safety research also utilise this important principle in assessing unsafe work practices in connection with the work environment, and designing subsequent safety systems where the easiest thing to do is also the right thing to do. 

Applied Behaviour Analysis & Workplace Change:

• If the old behaviour is walking into a ditch, the replacement behaviour is walking around the ditch and thus the intervention is the fence. 
• If the old behaviour is using an old version of the form or file on the system and the replacement behaviour is using the current version form or file, then the intervention is to remove or block access to all old copies of forms and files. 
• If the old behaviour is arriving late while claiming your normal hours on your timesheet and the new behaviour is arriving on time and claiming correct pay then the intervention is a biometric (i.e., fingerprint) start/end shift clock. 
• If the old behaviour is turning up late at meetings or leaving early and the new behaviour is attending on time with full engagement then the intervention is assigning roles and responsibilities in meetings to everyone, sharing accountability for group behaviour within team via moderator and publishing names of people who attend late/leave early in meeting minutes. 
• If the old behaviour is refusing to provide feedback to other people about their work performance and the new behaviour is providing real-time feedback, then the intervention is regular cycles of group based peer feedback structured into normal work routines and written into employment contracts. 

Success Factor 3 - Try Before You Buy 

“People need to have been exposed to your idea approximately 20 times and/or experienced it personally at least 3 times.” Smith & Krugman’s Theories

For people to make a genuine commitment and buy-in, they will need to have been exposed to your offering (i.e., heard about or saw it) approximately 20 times (Smith’s Advertising Theory) and/or experienced it personally at least 3 times (Krugman’s Theory). 

Try Before You Buy (Effective Frequency Theory): 

Consumer Psychology is the study of individuals, groups or organisations and the processes they use to select, secure and use, products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy their needs and wants. One of the most important ‘holy grail’ questions business’ want to know is how many times do they need to promote their product to a person before they will buy it? 

There are some classic examples of answers to this question, which still ring true today. Thomas Smith was an early pioneer of print advertising and wrote a guide called Successful Advertising in 1885, where he outlined a 20-step model required for people to become engaged to the point of decision in regards to a new product or service promoted in printed material. 

Herbert E. Krugman (1965) was a TV advertising executive whose theory has been adopted and used widely in the advertising industry. Krugman believed that there were only three levels of exposure necessary for people in their experience of watching a television commercial: (1) curiosity, (2) recognition, and (3) decision, with any further exposure simply being repeats of the third exposure effect (i.e., a reinforcement of the decision on the third exposure). 

Since these early ideas about consumer psychology and advertising there has been a lot of research and much debate about the various technical aspects of 'exposure' and 'experience'. However consensus still remains on the importance of giving consumers multiple exposures to a new idea and personal experiences of various elements of the new idea prior to making a purchasing decision. 

Try Before You Buy & Workplace Change: 

• Begin dropping ideas into conversations well ahead of actual formal discussion. 
• Break down new initiatives into smaller components and introduce various aspects of ideas into workplace routines before the formal introduction of initiatives. 
• 'Pilot’ or ‘Road Test’ ideas in leadership teams to ‘de-bug’ them and maximise leaders confidence in using approaches so they can be effective and authentic change agents. 

Success Factor 4 - Realistic Timeframes

“It is widely accepted that a carefully planned new product or initiative will take twice as long as predicted to deliver.” Project Management Theory

It is widely accepted that a carefully planned new product or initiative will take twice as long as predicted to deliver, while a poorly planned new product or initiative will take 3 times as long as predicted (Project Management Theory). 

Realistic Timeframes (The Uncertainty Principle): 

Have you ever tried to get fit or lose weight? How about building or renovating a house? Did you achieve your goal on time OR did it take roughly twice as long as expected? (Or are you still working on it even now?) 

There is some helpful science behind why things take longer than expected and, you guessed it, we totally need to factor this into any workplace change initiative. 

The Uncertainty Principle: From Quantum Physics to Project Management - Werner Heisenberg is famous for his Uncertainty Principle – you either know the position of a particle or its velocity, but not both at the same time. This is because observing a particle involves shining light on it; and the light itself transfers energy to the particle, thus increasing its speed and/ or changing its direction. The Uncertainty Principle highlights the built-in uncertainty, indeterminacy, and unpredictability that exists in every multi-element process. For project managers, the Uncertainty Principle means that the time and scope of the project cannot be precisely measured. 

How Uncertainty Behaves - Most people have an intuitive feeling that tasks are more likely to require more time and effort than planned, rather than less. This feeling is correct for two reasons. First, we are likely to inadvertently omit from scope some of the hidden tasks that contribute to the overall work, and so underestimate the effort. Second, there is more likelihood for work to grow beyond expectation than to shrink below expectation. 

The Avoidable Timeframe Mistakes We Make - There are some causes of schedule slips that are completely unpredictable and unavoidable. Human brains are lousy at making estimates, and are notoriously poor at accurately estimating probabilities. Left untrained, our brains are wired to make guesses based on a 50% chance of success. As a result, people tend to underestimate the duration of a task, or over-estimate the likelihood of completing a task in a given period of time. 

When most people estimate how long a project will take to complete they simply add up the time for each component to get a total time – this is often referred to as bottom up scheduling. Bottom up methods give too little attention to the delays and errors that may occur at handoffs and integration points. A simple example on a personal level, is planning 30 minutes of exercise into our workdays which may take longer or simply not occur at all if we fail to connect with all the additional integration points like access of venue, traffic, interruptions, energy levels etc. 

The solution that project management theorists arrived at, given the previously mentioned complexities of human error in estimation, scheduling methodologies and unpredictable events, is to always plan twice the estimated time needed for delivering a new project. Thus a 30 minute exercise session will require a total of 60 minutes set aside in your diary planner.

Realistic Timeframes & Workplace Change: 

• Meetings: Book additional time into the diary to allow for over-runs and for post meeting discussions with the team, especially during periods of organisational change. 
• Delegating tasks: Get a ‘brief back’ on the steps needed to complete task and risks, and analyse any handoff or integration issues as well as get the person to provide both their likely estimate and worst-case completion time. Always plan for the worst-case time period, never assume they will meet their estimated deadline. 
• Data walls for project management must have clearly marked timelines and stages on any project data walls displayed around the office. Engage visually with this material during meetings to increase conversation around timelines and prioritise updates and real-time feedback discussions. 
• Regarding role change, recognise that even simple changes to people’s roles could take many months to fully integrate into their work routines. 
• Regarding culture change, recognises the complexity of organisational transformation, so break this down into simpler structural and process changes to increase speed and certainty of change. 

Your Action Plan & Pending Change Initiatives

Take a look at your team’s action plans (i.e., Strategic and Operational Plans) and the strategies you are implementing that require change. For each change strategy you are implementing consider the following: 

Factor 1: Decrease Pain & Increase Pleasure – Will your proposed change be able to decrease pain and/or increase pleasure?

Factor 2: Structure Enables Behaviour – Will your change plan include the implementation of structures and processes that will consistently support the behavioural change you are seeking (and make the old way harder to engage in)? 

Factor 3: Try Before You Buy – Will you be able to expose people to the new change at least 20 times prior to giving them 3 actual experiences before expecting them to commit? 

Factor 4: Realistic Timeframes – Have you allowed twice as long as you thought it would take (and three times as long if poorly planned...)?

Fast-tracking transformational change is about making sure these 4 Success Factors are incorporated into any change initiative to shorten the timeframe needed to achieve a sustainable result.

When one or more of these Four Success Factors cannot be adequately addressed then success is still possible provided we (1) develop compensatory support strategies as well as (2) extend the timeframes needed for staff to adapt and adjust. In bringing this together I want to end with a great surfing analogy which is: 'Whilst you cannot control the waves, you can always improve your ability to surf!'

Dr Pete Stebbins PhD

Dr Pete Stebbins, PhD, is a workplace psychologist, executive coach & author of the recently released book: "Level Up! Building The Highest Performance Teams". Pete has many years of research and professional practice behind him working extensively in education and health. Pete is the director of the High Performance Schools Program working with a large number of schools to maximise staff and student outcomes. 

High Performance Teams In Schools...

• Kay Kirkman on Mentoring Principals & Building High Performance Schools
• Samantha Donovan on School Culture & High Performance Teaching Teams 
• Dr David Turner on Leading High Performance Schools Into The Future
• Roselynne Anderson on The Power of Feedback in High Performance Schools
• Phillip Carleton on Building Explicit & Consistent School Culture
• Sharon Barker on Building High School Culture From Start Up
• Katrina Jones on A Team Approach to Quality Teaching and Learning
• Kurt Goodwin on The School Transformation Change Journey
• Judi Newman on Middle Leadership Capability in Large High Schools
• Anthony Lucey on High Performance Teaching Teams in Catholic Education