Successful change in 5 steps - overcoming individual barriers

“Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past and present are certain to miss the future.”

Those words of John F. Kennedy are as relevant today as they were around 60 years ago.

The difference: today we live in a time where we experience a rate of change that was probably inconceivable in Kennedy’s times.

Businesses and organisations are affected by this development and are forced to keep up with time, otherwise it can lead to severe consequences. No matter if related to the ongoing pandemic, digitalisation, new work or revised business concepts – changes are inevitable.

The consequences of the increased demand in managing change are:

• The global market for change management consultancy is worth at least 1 billion Euro per year, some sources estimate it to be significantly higher.
• The market growth of this business is predicted to be very dynamic for the coming years, with rates clearly exceeding global GDP growth.
•  Many people in organisations work on change – this is for instance visible if you enter “change” or “transformation” in the LinkedIn search: it is millions of people.

You could expect decent success rates because of this professionalisation of change management and the significant spend.

The reality?

Studies reveal that up to 80% of change initiatives do not deliver their targets!

Hold on for a moment – what does this mean? Up to 80% of money spent in change projects goes down the drain!

The return on investment is simply horrible.

What is the problem, what are barriers to effective change?

The unconscious side

During my corporate career I had exciting jobs, responsibility over teams and key processes and the opportunity to lead or steer major projects – all of that involved change. There were many occasions to experience initiatives that worked well and others that did not – however, in my first years I had no clear understanding why that happened.

Entering the world of unconscious biases in the midst of my corporate career helped me to start understanding better.

While initially focusing on decision making, it became clear to me rather soon that biases are a major factor in change as well.

Biases form invisible barriers to change.

Change is complex – it involves perceiving new information and judging it in order to finally decide if to go for change or not. Change usually is not done in isolation, other people are involved and there is intense interaction. Finally, implementation is key to create effects on practical behaviour that differs from the initial state.

I have created this classification of biases based on practical questions in order to start De-Biasing with focus on tangible solutions for real-world issues.

The complexity of change initiatives means that all of them are touched, hence need to be considered.

We will go deeper and address the most relevant biases in this field.

Change on the individual level

The classical example of ineffective change attempts are New Year’s resolutions. The picture is rather clear:

• In Germany 16 % of them are implemented successfully.
• In the UK around 52 % believe to be able to realise their resolutions, but...
• …only 12 % succeed in doing so

Sources: Business Insider 2018; Alltagsforschung 2009

What the studies also show is intriguing: the awareness about the urgency for changes is clearly there in many cases, however the right approach and implementation is lacking.

When going deeper, we find a lot of biases that impact already on the individual level during the different stages of change.

The picture shows all those of them which impact change and which are also featured in the series “Reduce biases in 5 steps”.

Note: We will take the most central of them and go deeper, adding points from other relevant ones (discussing all of them in detail here would simply go beyond the meaningful limits in the format; you could easily add others on top > best is to simply contact me if you are interested in further details. For an introduction on biases take a look at De-Biasing or book an intro Webinar).

Biases eat change for breakfast

What is the central bias related to change?

The status quo bias.

It essentially makes us say “things should stay just as they are”. Hence, it means the preference to maintain the current way of being and doing (i.e. the status quo) in the absence of pressure to change.

Related to this is the “default-effect” which means that from different options we prefer the one which does not need an active decision. Change needs incentives that are sufficient enough to trigger a movement away from the current status.

In simply language: if we don’t have to move, we rather don’t.

What is behind this bias?

Essentially, moving away from the status quo is perceived as a loss (it does not have to be a loss in reality of course) which gives a close connection to loss aversion, another bias. Changing involves uncertainty, moving out of the comfort zone, maybe risk – these are all elements that our brains perceive to weigh higher than potential gains. This is one of the fundamental ingredients of the “prospect theory” from Kahneman & Tversky which contributed to the former receiving the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Your current status gives a strong reference point (which itself might have been impacted by other biases like anchoring) – moving away seems to be more of a loss than a benefit.

Important: a loss is not meant to be monetary only. Giving up a routine, a concept or a used environment are other examples.

Is this necessarily bad?

It is not.

Imagine that everybody changes immediately after being asked to do so or if a new option comes along. This would not allow any stability and mean a massive investment of energy to actually keep changing continuously.

Our brains have a signature feature which is to act as efficiently as possible. Our neural connections strengthen when they are used frequently and when used for important information routes (then they are “well-tuned”). Patterns, learned from past experiences, help us gain efficiency and consequently save energy.

We can interpret the preference for the status quo as a protection mechanism for efficiency. Most of the time this makes sense – our routines and habits help us be act energy efficiently.

But: when changing would be the better choice for us, the preference for the status quo becomes the status quo bias: we continue with an old pattern when investing energy into something new would be beneficial to us. The consequences of inaction are worse than the results of action, i.e. change.

This is tricky - every change request is a direct challenge to our efficient neural connections. There is a neural cost for change, there is a cost of learning - which has to be well justified.

“To uproot an old habit is sometimes a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to wrench out a tooth.” Samuel Smiles

What is a way out?

We have seen before that New Year’s resolutions are an example where individuals express their willingness to change but most of them do not succeed.

But: there are people who reach what they plan for. Hence, not every change attempt is bound to fail.

The same goes for the professional area – maybe you want to:

• implement a job change
• learn a new skill or
• expand your current role or network.

There is a chance that you reach what you head for – here are 5 suggestions how to manage individual change successfully.

1. Acknowledge that biases are present & address them

If you want to change on individual level, the status quo bias will visit you at some stage (together with some other of his "friends"). It helped me tremendously, both in professional and private life, to understand my individual biases better.

The point is that we all have developed different patterns over time which trigger biases. Some will impact heavily, others less and many will not be relevant – they are individual to you. Consequently, De-Biasing starts with you – accept that you have biases (as every other human) and address those that are relevant to you.

This removes already a major barrier in change initiatives.

 2. Conscious target setting

In practical life, change might not always be something you can choose – however: if you can, be conscious about it.

The first and fundamental question is if change is worthwhile – reflect what is worth spending energy and what you expect as improvement out of it.

The second question, in case you choose to change, is to define your target in a way that is acceptable to you. Many people have a tendency to overestimate what can be done and by when (another bias…). Try to define a target which you feel 80% confident to achieve – very likely, this means a compromise of the initial idea and ambition.

Hurdles will come – it is easier to manage smaller and fewer ones during the journey.

 3. Practise self-awareness when you start to move

You decided to change, you have a basic understanding of your biases – now you start to move. Changing means choosing to expose yourself to new experiences. Your brain will take them as input to “rewire”, to establish new neural connections – to learn.

You will experience hurdles.

Be aware what happens – which thoughts, which arguments against change appear in your mind, what is it that you do not like. Try to get deeper to understand what is behind - ideally you can directly work on the root causes.

As said before, every change attempt is a challenge to efficient patterns and there will be resistance.

What helped me during change processes: moving away from the question “why” (in the sense of “why do I have to do this is order to change”) to “why not”. What are really good arguments not to change? I usually did not find sufficient ones, so I kept going.

4. Make it digestible

Your target might be ambitious, even when you set it cautiously.

Consider that your brain constructs new neural patterns and strengthens them over time (again to gain efficiency). Aiming for an immediate improvement leap conflicts with this. Rather go for small steps - every day, maybe every hour even – and repeat.

Bringing in some structure and breaking change ambitions into smaller components will help you to be more effective. Build in reminders on those tools or routines which you use regularly – in my case, this is the calendar. I see my own ambition and daily tasks there, which helps me realise them.

 5. Increase commitment if necessary

At some stage you will be on the borderline to stop, you simply do not want to continue.

What helps me in these situations is to expose my change ambition if I believe it will be tough to reach. It can be a public statement, a bet or telling others about my progress (I might ask them to ask me on regular basis).

This kind of self-nudging can be very effective as it build more social pressure in order to continue a change process.

Change is difficult but manageable

In the first-place change is a choice – learning needs prior exposure to new situations and contexts, so that new experiences develop.

Change means meeting resistance from yourself – we have discussed some ways to mitigate these hurdles that also relate to biases.

Change is a process, not an event – it needs continuity, persistence and will which all can be developed and practised.

Change does not stop at the individual level though; the next article will focus on organisational change and measures to increase its effectiveness.

Thank you for feedback, thoughts, and challenges!