The Weekly 'W's - 1 - The Why of Resisting Change

[The Weekly 'W's is my weekly series exploring the What, Why, When, Where and the occasional hoW ?? of things that interest me. It is an attempt to get back into the writing habit, from which I had taken a break for a few years.]

I recently listened to an episode of The Innovation Engine podcast, featuring an interview with author and professor David Schonthal, who co-wrote the book "The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas." The book explores the idea that many innovators tend to focus so much on the "fuel" (the compelling and motivating aspects) to drive any change, but often times neglect the effect of "friction" (resistance) to change. Focusing on the sources of friction could be an untapped opportunity to overcome the inhibitors and derive positive success. After listening to the podcast, I read up some more and based on my understanding, there are four types of friction that the authors have highlighted:

1) Inertia - The magnitude of the change directly corresponds to the amount of inertia present in any idea. As the author remarked "people’s desire to stick with what’s familiar is frequently underestimated."

2) Effort - There are several sources of effort that contribute to friction towards change. There is economic cost involved with many changes, sometimes there is also physical effort required. The one often overlooked effort, which was a personal light-bulb moment for me, is the cognitive effort involved in understanding and sustainably adapting to a new way of doing things.

3) Emotion - This represents the anxiety, fear and other such negative feelings caused by the change. This is also one of the hardest to fully understand because people don't easily verbalize (or even non-verbalize!) their feelings openly.

4) Reactance - Finally, this represents whether the change is a result of external pressure, as in being forced to change by "others". A level of autonomy and choice exercised by self is very important to overcome this particular friction.

As it happened, I was listening to the episode during my daily running activity, so I tried to apply and understand these frictions in the context of my own reasonably successful change that I have implemented recently in my daily running activity. I am currently pursuing a daily running streak (of minimum 2 miles) which has sustained for more than 200 days now. Before May 2023, I would run sporadically a few times in a week, sometimes motivated by a 5K event that I would sign up for. It didn't become a daily habit. I could imagine a few frictions that were at play, mainly related to inertia and effort, although emotionally I did want to make this change. Here are a few observations on how I have handled these frictions and resistances to change:

1) Inertia: 10K distance (~6.2 miles) represents my personal aspirational challenge goal, whereas 5K distance (~3.1 miles) is something I am usually comfortable with and have demonstrated to myself that I can run and complete several times over the years consistently. Hence I consciously chose 2 miles as the daily run goal which reduced the inertia in my own mind on how much change this represented. [After 200 days, I am now considering increasing it to 3 miles twice a week, which again is a small incremental change]

2) Effort: Perhaps this was the toughest friction to overcome. A daily commitment of close to an hour requires several adjustments to the daily life. Especially considering that I live in a place which experiences cold winters for several months including snowfall (and my own preference for running on open spaces or tracks instead of treadmills.) Finding a fitness center near my home that has an indoor running track radically contributed to overcoming this friction. I have also made a habit of using the waiting time when I take my daughter to her classes to cover my running. When I travel for work or vacation, I have made it a point to stay in hotels which have a fitness center. I plan my day keeping in mind the need to accommodate my running. My family has also been helpful in accommodating my needs on this aspect, which is very important. I have also purchased some running apparels for relatively warmer winter days to run outside, and they work well too.

3) Emotion - I really understand that I needed to do something for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, so this was never a significant friction for me. I have a friends group motivated towards running for several years, and they keep me sustained by sharing their running stats and pictures. Though we all live across the globe, it feels great to be connected through a shared passion.

4) Reactance - Though panned a lot mainly for our inability to keep it up, I am personally a big fan of the concept of "resolutions". There is an inherent power to the statement "I resolve to do so-and-so." In the Nike Run Club app, that I use to track my running, there are weekly and monthly challenges with different distance levels that we can choose to participate in. [Goodreads has an annual reading challenge with the ultimate flexibility, you can choose how many books you want to read in that year!] Even for the daily run streak, I did not really start with any objective to go for 200 days. I chose to approach it as one day at a time, and see how long it would take me. That freedom and choice has really made the difference. The more I have accomplished, the harder it will be do stop any day, which is all the more fascinating.

Do listen to the podcast and read the book if you can.

Please share your comments on how you have faced some of these frictions in your areas of change and how you have succeeded.