The great change trap-eze!

The great change trap-eze!

Rich Hirst Rich Hirst

Rich Hirst

Abundium Co-Founder ?? Performance Psychology ?? Exponential Growth ?? Coach & Speaker ?? Dad x 5

发布日期: 2019年1月31日
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Change done badly can feel like a trap. We become stuck and on the defense as we anxiously wait for our captor to come in for the kill. Not terribly motivating huh!

Research by CEB now Gartner found that across hundreds of major organisational changes 50% were clear failures and 16% had mixed results. Just 34% were clear successes.

When change is done well it feels more like a trapeze. As Professor Mark Bonchek from Singularity University and founder of Shift Thinking says…

"Change is like a trapeze, we hang onto old ways of doing things until a new one appears within reach."

Steve Jobs understood this concept well. You remember how he launched the iPhone in 2007…

"today we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device."

A clever marketing ploy no doubt to position it as three things when it was actually one, but that’s not the only reason he did it this way.

Jobs described the iPhone relative to what people already knew, empowering people to embrace the change, letting go of the old trapeze and grabbing the new one.

Same ploy three years later with the iPad too. When it launched in 2010 he positioned it visually between the iPhone and a laptop, a bridge if you will, between the two for a more intimate experience of browsing, emailing, photos, video, music, games and ebooks.

As you may remember the iPad became Apple’s fastest-selling new product ever at the time. As the Wall Street Journal said 

"The last time there was this much excitement over a tablet, it had some commandments written on it."

That statement is true in more ways then one. The iPad was by no means the first tablet and not even the first Apple tablet (R.I.P. Apple Message Pad below). But it was the first one to make tablets cool. 

There is nothing new or revolutionary about leading change in this way. If we go back to the introduction of the car at the turn of last century it was initially referred to as the ‘horseless carriage’. Some early designs really took this to the extreme!

We laugh but to this day some people, some very wealthy people, are still driving around with a horse on the front of their car!

So what does this mean if we are leading change?

William Bridges was right on the money when he introduced the concept of ‘transitions’. Before we can embrace ‘new beginnings’ we must start with an ‘ending’, i.e. we first need to identify what we are letting go of.

Back to the circus act metaphor, a trapeze artist swings a number of times before letting go for at least three reasons.

  1. To build up momentum so they have enough speed and height to make the leap.
  2. To build up confidence that the catcher has a safe pair of hands and is ready.
  3. To build up alignment with the catcher so time in the air is minimised.

Too often in organisations we see people that don’t let go of the old bar as ‘change resistant’ or ‘trouble makers’. They can quickly become ostracized and marginalised impacting not only their performance levels but those of the people around them.

However, it is both natural and important that they are given the opportunity to swing a number of times to build up the necessary momentum in order to let go. Some people will require more swings than others. Such behaviour is normal and rarely intentionally obstructive.

It is also quite possible the reason they have not let go is because they don’t believe the person or change they are swinging to is a safe bet. That’s where building a bridge between the old and the new is so important, as Jobs and the horseless carriage exemplified.

Finally it may be a matter of alignment. No one wants to fall, even if there is safety net. And the more time in the air (i.e. in the neutral zone as Bridges called it between the old world and the new one) the greater the risk of not connecting with your catcher.

It is interesting that of the three reasons above explaining why people may be resisting change at least two are directly related to the catcher. The catcher of course in an organisational context is the person leading the change.

So what can catchers, or leaders do to help their people to let go and embrace a new bar?

  1. Acknowledge the past. It is one thing to talk about the past with your people, another to ask them about it. Give them the opportunity to talk about what they loved and loathed.
  2. Connect the past to the future. Explain what elements from the past will be embraced in the future and how frustrations from the past will be addressed.
  3. Give your people time and space to swing. Clearly you can’t wait for people to let go of the past forever but equally it doesn't pay to rush it. Swinging is natural and builds momentum.
  4. Ensure the future is a safe place. Safety guarantees can be difficult if the change is significant but clearly articulating how people will be supported goes a long way. Change leaders need to have a safe pair of hands.
  5. Get in sync. If you want your people to let go you need to be in sync with them. Top-down change is old school. Open source change is the future (see here for more on that topic).

There is one final twist in the trapeze act however. Bridges says

"transition is the natural process of disorientation and reorientation that marks the turning points in the path of growth."

The best change leaders understand how to ‘put a new bar in reach’ without depriving people of the stretch required to let go and take a leap of faith.

To make the leap too easy may take away a key growth opportunity for the people transitioning, and that's one thing leaders should never let go of.

Remember,

‘no risk no reward, know risk know reward.”


Rich Hirst is a leadership, change and high performance psychologist. His insights are based on real world experiences from his work with 10,000+ leaders and over 1,000 CEOs, underpinned by his knowledge as an organisational psychologist and expertise as a change agent supporting organisations for more than 20 years going through major transformation.

For more information please go to www.richhirst.com or contact me via email on [email protected]. Please find below links to my previous monthly posts.

Carmen Jacobsen

Driving and influencing change

5 年

Great article Rich, love the quote “no risk, no reward, know risk, know reward”!

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