Myth-Busting Culture Change: Changing Locks Changes Attitudes...

"A bad system will beat a good person every time" W Edwards Deming

"Well Pete, you may fix the underlying problem but that won't change their attitudes..." Anon

with Ben De Young & Alistair Kerr

I have heard some crazy things from managers in my time – some really mind-numbing, jaw-dropping moments of nonsense from people who really should know better… The other day, while I was working with a team of very experienced senior managers, I experienced a new low point in my career working in change management and organisational transformation....

We were in the middle of a workshop on Fast-tracking Sustainable Culture Change working through a serious safety related concern – namely the issue of staff having a poor attitude towards, and a mixed compliance response to, the safety procedure involving the lock-down of a high security dangerous goods area in their workplace – specifically ensuring that two consecutive doors were never left unlocked at the same time.

The workshop began with a simple exercise to identify the culture change ‘hot issues’ facing the organisation with some consensus among the leadership group about the most important topics to focus on. By far the issue most important to this particular group was “Changing staff perceptions on the burden of safety procedures”

We then quickly worked through the theory of Fast-tracking Sustainable Culture Change using the four success factors outlined below and the applicable timeframes for various types of workplace change (see previous post).

Once we had the basics covered we then broke out into smaller groups to develop some possible change management strategies to address their nominated  ‘hot issue’ (insert) with each group required to design a change strategy to address the ‘hot issue’ and assess the pros and cons of their strategy against the 4 success factors (see worksheet).

Once the breakout groups concluded we reconvened to share some of the change management strategies we had developed. There were three different strategies developed by the leadership team with some interesting debate and commentary among team members about the relative merits and drawbacks of each one.

Strategy 1: Develop a ‘safety conversation’ procedure for frontline supervisors to use with safety critical staff to improve compliance

This strategy fit with many contemporary trends in safety culture particularly with regard to the language of safety and importance of constantly reinforcing the right messages among staff as well as ensuring an open two–way dialogue between staff and managers about important issues.

When the rest of the group discussed this strategy there was general agreement about the usefulness of the approach. However, some of the operational managers were concerned about the length of time it would take for genuine changes in behaviour and attitudes (i.e., 12-24 months) and the lack of quality assurance about supervisors actually complying with the protocol as opposed to making a joke of it to appear ‘popular’ with the staff. Importantly, when looking ahead over the next 12-24 months it was also highlighted that the political environment surrounding the organisation, contract re-tendering and challenges from head office implementing new workforce management systems created a real risk that this initiative would quickly get lost and forgotten amongst all the other important agendas and urgent tasks supervisors were constantly responding to.

Strategy 2: Implement an improved safety compliance dashboard and agenda item seeking feedback in team meetings

Once this strategy was shared to the whole group there was a consensus quickly developed among the wider leadership team about the value of improving score-carding on safety compliance issues and creating a dashboard which could be a visual aide to encourage better structure for discussion and engagement in team meetings – especially if this new meeting item replaced others and did not increase the length (i.e., pain) or complexity of the team meeting agendas.

The risks in this strategy appeared to relate primarily to (1) the additional hassle and demand on management to generate the necessary reports; and (2) managers being able to effectively run the team meetings where the data was discussed. However, these risks seemed manageable in the circumstance. The timeframe for embedding the changed meeting procedure also seemed quite reasonable with staff likely to be engaging in genuine and helpful dialogue during the meeting (a precursor to shifts in behaviour and attitude) within 3 months.

Strategy 3: Change the lock system in the high secure area so it is impossible to have two doors unlocked at the same time

The last group to present had several senior managers who had military and police backgrounds, and unlike the other breakout groups who focused on directly engaging with staff about their attitudes and behaviours on an individual or team level, the final breakout group simply opted to change the lock system to stop the risk in the first place. They reasoned this would immediately solve the most urgent problem of safety and people would ‘like it or lump it’ and eventually get used to it and stop complaining.

After their short presentation the room erupted with concerns raised by the other two groups that such a strategy was not actually addressing the question of changing attitudes and behaviours. Moreover they contended simply changing the locks was akin to treating the staff as incompetent fools who would resent such change to the extent it would make the problem worse – with possible sabotage and damage to equipment a real problem not to mention industrial action in the form of strikes and bans and the original biggest risk of all – possible harm to staff from exposure to dangerous goods…..

WTF??? Was I hearing this correctly? Why are they seriously saying that changing the lock system was not a valid change management strategy when it came to modifying staff attitudes and behaviours towards safety? Perhaps they had forgotten some of the basic rules of behavior change – but before we unpack this further let’s quickly assess this strategy against the 4 success factors needed to fast-track sustainable change.

Regarding the first factor (Pain vs Pleasure), changing the lock system to a simpler more fool proof approach was not anymore painful compared to the current procedure nor was it a radical new idea people had to think through extensively. Regarding the second factor (Structure Enables Behavior), the new lock system made the correct behaviour much easier to do. Regarding the third factor (Try Before You Buy), people did not have to like it as a precursor to trying it out – they could engage with it many times and gradually adjust their attitudes at their own pace without compromising the security. Finally regarding the fourth factor (Realistic Timeframes), because it was a simple system change, the timeline for attitude adjustment from the old habits to the new ones was not only predictable – but also quite fast* compared to the other groups proposed strategies. (*Habit change research indicates constantly engaging in new behaviours creates habit (an automatic response not raising any significant adverse emotional reaction) within 66 days).

Culture Change & The Myths of Modern Management

So what was the big argument really about? As we stepped through the issues further, some myths of modern management were revealed.

1.    To change behaviour you must first change attitudes – This is proven wrong on so many levels. The simplest and most powerful refute is through the work of Amy Cuddy who showed that making people behave differently ultimately adjusted their emotions and attitudes.

2.    People need to come up with ideas themselves if they are to ‘own’ them and buy-in – this is false and the false perception of choice and tokenistic consultation process many organisation’s undertake can make resistance to change much worse.

3.    People need a lot of time to gradually adjust to change – false. Whilst it is true that people need multiple exposures to new ideas and changes to understand and assimilate them, nonetheless it is also true that clear, specific and well structured change can be done rapidly. It can be quite damaging to suggest to people they have a genuine ‘choice’ to act the old or new way when management is fully invested and biased in making the new process the default option – honesty is always the best policy when making change.

4.    People never accept change that is forced upon them – so untrue. Changing habitual behvaiour patterns takes on average 66 days and most people with a near death experience due to a health problem accept the need for change and make radical changes to improve their longevity rather then reject the change and speed up their own demise.

So what does this all really mean? Well the right answer is from the behaviour analysis viewpoint and looking for the fastest, simplest, and safest path for change with the right behaviours almost guaranteed by structural changes and allowing plenty of time for individual adjustment to occur once the new behavior is occurring.  The wrong answer is from the emotional intelligence viewpoint which takes people on a long and winding personal development journey where ultimately they have to ‘choose’ to change – with this uncertain timeframe disconnected to the urgency needed to avoid major damage to the organization in the interim! Remember whilst there is usually no ‘perfect’ change management strategy per se, some strategies are clearly going to be more effective than others when dealing with the ‘real world’ constraints of time, people, resources and risks.

My ABCs of Culture Change

In summary, when it comes to culture change my personal rules, which I refer to as my ABCs are: (A) Maximise the structure needed to make the new behaviour stick; (B) minimise the messaging of change (make it a minor tweak to business as usual as opposed to a massive breakthrough it the way we work together...) to lessen the pain of change and increase the pleasure of the familiar (better the devil you know); and (C) get people trying (i.e., pilot project, test drive, trial phase) the new behaviour without having to like it and don't expect smiling faces for a while but new habits will form and happiness will appear if you remain consistent and supportive in implementing your changes over the longer term!

Ride The Waves of Life!

Dr Pete Stebbins

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Dr Pete Stebbins, PhD is a Workplace Psychologist and Executive Coach. With many years of research and professional practice behind him he has managed to complete and evaluate numerous leadership and team transformation projects providing the ground swell for the common sense approach of the High Performance Teams Framework. Pete is a regular on LinkedIn writing on Leadership, Teams, Resilience & Life Strategy. Contact Pete at: [email protected] or visit drpetestebbins.com