Getting change to stick

Using Martin Buber's "I and You" as a basis for managing change

I first read Martin Buber’s short work, I and You as a college junior and it quickly became the foundation for how I think about relationship. In the decade since, I haven’t reread it, but it’s thesis has carried a gentle undercurrent to my life, showing up when I need to think long thoughts about how we relate to each other as people. First in my senior thesis, then in my graduate school applications, and now because it snuck into a thought I had about managing change at work.

Managing Change

Change that goes well

This is a nice graph. Clean and clear, it shows the journey that is hoped for in any business change. A new software rollout, a new org structure, it all follows some version of Contact, Awareness, Understanding, Commitment and Ownership.

Clearly communicate all this to your stakeholders and bingo! You’ve got change.

Change that does not go well

But what if people really don’t want to make the change? Does that graph go like this?

Why are some changes harder than others, even if they share many traits with an easy, already implemented change?

Why is it so difficult to get people to accurately track their time? Or share their data?

Then, once again, I noticed the quiet burble of Martin Buber’s “I and You” in the stream of my mind. It might help parse things out.

I and You

Written in Buber’s native German in 1923, Ich und Du is a mix of poetry and philosophical treatise. The first translation to English cemented a translation as I and Thou, but it’s better translated as I and You, because no one says thou anymore. We only say you.

Martin Buber belonged to a loose collection of thought called contemporary existentialism. Briefly and crudely, existentialism is an understanding that people are human be-ings, with an emphasis on the ing*. People are not objects that can be known fully, but continually come into being through our actions and relationships; in our existence. 

As we come into being, Buber declares that man or woman can have two attitudes, that are based on the two basic words pairs we can speak. A word pair considers the recipient of the words we speak. "This chair is uncomfortable." The recipient of those words are an uncomfortable object, a chair. "You can call me Al." The recipient of those words are a person who is known. The first word pair is an experience with an object, or an “I-It” attitude. The second is an attitude for relationship. “When one says You, the I of the word pair I-You is said too.”

I –It: I can approach someone with either of these attitudes. In fact, I most often have an I-It attitude. I don’t have any intention of forming a relationship with the bus driver or the people standing next to me on the train.

My attitude toward those people is an I-It. They are objects who I experience and interact with, but do not change my “I”. These are transactional experiences, either incidental or means based. I happened to stand next to this person on the train. The bank teller is a means for me to withdraw cash from my account. I perceive the bank teller to be a thing and the experience exists within me. “I perceive something. I feel something. I want something. I think something…. But the realm of You has another basis.”

I –You: The realm of You is relationship and relationship is reciprocity. I stand in relationship with You. The relationship is outside me and so to are the things that go along with relationship, like trust and vulnerability.

“When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-You to him, then he is no thing among things... I stand in relationship to him.” 

I stand in relationship.

A few short months ago, I entered a new relationship. Our daughter was born and my relationship as her father was created. That relationship exists outside of me. I do not control it. Her laugh warms my heart and her cry sets it on edge. Her tiny actions create feelings in me, but that's not relationship. To enter the relationship, I had to approach not with an attitude of I-It, but I-You.

“Feelings one “has”; love occurs. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love. This is no metaphor but actuality: love does not cling to an I, as if the You were merely it’s “content” or object; it is between I and You”

An I-You attitude is danced in and out of. There will certainly be times when I respond to my children with an object attitude. I did this morning when we were headed out the door. This object, my son, needs his shoes on. He also needs a coat. He should put it on. How can I get him to put it on? But, and this is the blessing of relationship, because I can also approach with an I-You attitude, I am able to dwell in the love that fills the firmament of our relationship, precisely because it exists outside of me. And in those times I’m transformed. Like yesterday when he said “This weekend, Mom and Ellie should go shopping and Dad and I should do a project with his tools.” That is pure magic.

But what in the world does love for your kids have to do with business?

Change and the In-between

If love exists in between I and You, what else exists in this place? What else sits in that created space of relationship? And how can understanding that help with managing change? I think there are two ways. Trust and the image of “I” that is brought to relationship.

Trust: Trust exists in relationship. It’s nature is to cast an island into a sea of uncertainty and critically only applies to things that are coming into being, the future is necessary. Now, you might say that I trust my car to be reliable, or this chair to not disappear when I go to sit on it, but really those are If-Then statements with clear logical progression and an It as the object. I sat on the chair yesterday. If it is here today then I can sit on it. I cannot cast a logical statement onto You, I have to cast it into the relationship that exists between us. If the relationship is broken, trust will evaporate.

Technical changes, like software updates, or new offices are largely rational, object driven changes. Click here. Your new office is there. But, if the technical change causes an interruption in trust, pure logic arguments or graphics will not be enough to move along that good curve. Relationship will be needed. Take timekeeping. It provides valuable data to help a group identify areas where help is needed. Why is it difficult for me to record my time well? Because I don’t trust what you’ll do with the data and I’m fearful that I will be judged from it. In order to manage this type of change, it needs to be moved through trusted relationships. What are you going to do with the data? What are you not going to do with the data? How are you going to show me that you're keeping your word?

The Image of “I”: Even if I agree with the existentialists, and take the notion that I am a be-ing, that is, still becoming, I rarely think of myself that way. Instead, like many, I have an image of myself within that context and act according to that image. The image of me with my kids? A dad. At work? A consultant who like to think. In the woods? A sidekick to Paul Bunyan and Bear Grylls. Nearly every relationship has an image associated with it, or who I imagine myself to be in that setting.

For many years, I held a professional image of myself as a physician. The traits that made up that image were scientific knowledge, deep care for others, interest in healthcare and a desire to do good with my work. The image was definitely a doctor. So, when I didn’t get into medical school, I faced a challenge. I could try again, but now my wife and I had a child. If I got in to school, we’d have to live apart for two years while I finished school and my wife moved for her residency. Our son would go with one of us. Then I’d have residency, maybe in the city my wife was in, maybe not. More years away from my wife and son. Terrible math.

Or, I could reimagine myself, and recast the image that I held for my professional life. I chose that path. Slowly, I realized that the traits that made up my image were not particular to the role of a doctor. I could use my scientific knowledge, care for others and interest in healthcare in business. So I pivoted and went to business school. Now, the change is completely internalized and I’m very pleased to have not gotten into medical school. It was without doubt my most wonderful failure.

But, consider the internal shifts I went through as I changed my image from doctor to consultant. It took a lot of time. So too do changes that require the image of “I” to be reimagined. When a hospital shifts to value based medicine, oncologists may have to recast their image from a fighter for patients, to a quarterback of a team of population health specialists. When a Senior Manager becomes a Vice President, they may have to reimagine their role as a tactical problem solver, to a strategic delegator. Those changes can be really difficult.

To Conclude

Relationship is reciprocity. And it exists between I and You. Trust also abides here. If a change impacts trust or how the I that comes to a relationship is imagined, it will be difficult. Not impossible, but definitely difficult. Normal tools used for logical object-driven changes should still be used (I’m talking about you ADKAR) but relationships must also be engaged. This creates a division, not between software and organizational change, or strategic and tactical, but between Objective change that can be reasoned through and Relationship change. I-It change and I-You change.

All quotes are taken from Walter Kauffman’s translation of Ich und Du, written by Martin Buber. The full text can be found here, albeit sideways.

 *A language tool I picked up in my favorite philosophy professor at Providence, Dr. Costello, is to dissect words. It sometimes gives a different understanding.

If I remember playing on the swings with my grandma as a kid, that thought is past and viewed at a distance. I can't do much more than be sentimental about it.

But I can also re-member playing on the swings with my grandma, and the memory is incorporated into who I am now. I can recognize her warmth and change how I act. It is re-membered.

Similarly, Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist tome, “Being and Nothingness” is better understood as “Being and No-thing-ness”.