What experiencing moments of being absent-minded teaches me about Change Management

The Universe has a wicked sense of humor. Proof of that is the fact that I am now writing about being absent-minded, one week after advocating for being present and practicing grounding mindfulness techniques.

Last Friday, I had a total “Minola Signature Moment.” I used to call them “moments that don’t matter”, only this one proved to be an inspiration spark. As soon as I got the notification that two packages were delivered, I grabbed a jacket, went out of the apartment, took the elevator to the groundfloor. Oh, it felt like a small Christmas all over again, one big box of books, and a smaller one with candles and water bottles. Priorities, priorities… I grabbed (more like “hugged”) the boxes, stepped back into the elevator, pressed the button. Once. Twice. Oh, joy, just my luck, what were the chances of something happening to the elevator during the last 28 seconds??? Three floors-worth of stairs later, as I reached out to open the apartment door, seeing my hand on the handle triggered a strange, out-of-body experience. I could see my finger pressing the elevator button. As in the groundfloor button while standing in the elevator on the groundfloor… Not the first time, most definitely not the last!

Still laughing, I dropped a note to one of my friends, and he jokingly replied: “That’s definitely a Change post idea.” Challenge accepted. I looked for the closest block of post-it notes, and thankfully I still remembered why I needed them by the time I found the pen…

How can you be sure of where you go and how to get there if you don’t pay attention to where you are? It never ceases to amaze me how much resistance there is within organizations, at senior stakeholder level, to investing time, focus and energy into a baseline study. When it comes up in conversations, regardless of how “light-touch” it is positioned – “Let’s just make sure we are all within the same book, if not exactly on the same page” for clarification and confirmation purposes only, the reply oftentimes comes as “We are all clear on where we are, this is precisely why we need this change. Can we get things started already?” I am sure next time I will hear this, I will have a very vivid picture of me standing in the elevator on the groundfloor, hugging the boxes, and eagerly pressing the groundfloor button. Over the years, I have always found solace after my moments of being absent-minded in a wonderful quote from English writer and journalist Gilbert K. Chesterton: “I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.” Reading it again these days, it brought a new line of reflection: what is this “presence of mind” focused on? And when my mind is present in a particular space, where is it absent from? One takeaway from the failed elevator ride for my change work is to not be so present in the future that it makes me absent from the present.

“The secret motive of the absent-minded is to be innocent while guilty. Absent-mindedness is spurious innocence.” This piece of wisdom from Canadian-born American writer Saul Bellow, winner of both Pulitzer and Nobel Prize for Literature, made me think about our sense of agency, how we use it for self-validation, and equally how readily we write it off when we need someone or something else to take the blame. In an article called “What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter?”, published in “Frontiers in Psychology” back in August 2016, James W. Moore from Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, talked about the sense of agency and how, as with other aspects of conscious experience, it is not an infallible reproduction of objective reality. “You might think that you are immune to such cognitive foibles, but you would almost certainly be mistaken. I would bet that most of us have fallen foul, at some point, of so-called ‘placebo buttons.’ These are buttons that we encounter every day that we think do things, but actually do nothing. Buttons at pedestrian crossings are a common example of placebo-buttons. Most of these buttons are ineffective and instead the changing of the traffic lights are linked to timers. (…) Intriguingly, most of us fail to notice the causal inefficacy of our button presses. Other examples of placebo buttons include ‘close door’ buttons in lifts and even thermostats in offices (many of which, apparently, do not work). There are two reasons for flagging up the occasional lapses in our sense of agency. The first is to show that the accuracy of this experience is not a given. Instead, the brain appears to actively construct the sense of agency, and because of this, our experiences of agency can be quite divorced from the facts of agency. The second reason is that these lapses reveal something quite remarkable about our sense of agency: its impressive flexibility. (…) we see over and over again that people come to experience control over outcomes in many weird and wonderful situations.” It came so naturally for me to conclude that the elevator must had broken down within the space of a few seconds than to assume I had done something wrong. How often are we witnessing and going through equivalent behaviors in our work environment? We are in control when the outcomes are positive, and the first reflex is to conclude that something must have gone wrong when they are less than ideal… Where is our “presence of mind” when it comes to analyzing our sense of agency? How does this influence our decision-making? I made a post-it note to look at future change conversations and project retrospectives through the lens of participants’ sense of agency. And I will keep a great quote from American aphorist Mason Cooley, Professor Emeritus of French, speech and world literature at the College of Staten Island, as a conversation prompt close by: “Most of my decisions in life seem absent-minded but inevitable.”

Never stop wondering what your mind might bring back from its wanderings. There are countless of rewards on a personal level out of mind wandering, as research has proved. In a post on the “Beautiful Minds” blog in September 2013, some of the gifts of being absent-minded include self-awareness, creative incubation, improvisation and evaluation, memory consolidation, autobiographical planning, goal driven thought, future planning, retrieval of deeply personal memories, reflective consideration of the meaning of events and experiences, simulating the perspective of another person, evaluating the implications of self and others’ emotional reactions, moral reasoning, and reflective compassion. “From this personal perspective, it is much easier to understand why people are drawn to mind wandering and willing to invest nearly 50% of their waking hours engaged in it. We mind wander, by choice or accident, because it produces tangible reward when measured against goals and aspirations that are personally meaningful. Having to reread a line of text three times because our attention has drifted away matters very little if that attention shift has allowed us to access a key insight, a precious memory or make sense of a troubling event. Pausing to reflect in the middle of telling a story is inconsequential if that pause allows us to retrieve a distant memory that makes the story more evocative and compelling. Losing a couple of minutes because we drove past our off ramp, is a minor inconvenience if the attention lapse allowed us finally to understand why the boss was so upset by something we said in last week’s meeting. Arriving home from the store without the eggs that necessitated the trip is a mere annoyance when weighed against coming to a decision to ask for a raise, leave a job, or go back to school.” I wonder now how becoming more intentionally aware of these rewards might influence our sense of agency… The brain balances remembering and forgetting gracefully to facilitate optimal use of memory and its processing power. Moments of being absent-minded can actually be a byproduct of rigorous thinking, smooth decision-making or heightened creativity, and it can enable us to think more clearly by eliminating interference from competing thoughts. As research shows, a judgement call on absent mindedness is influenced by outcomes, personal meaning and context. Does any of this remind you of Change Management? Oh, your mind has already wandered in that direction…

What was I saying? Ah, yes, the closing thought for today. Over the past couple of weeks, almost without exception, the change conversations I have been part of touched on ways to increase people’s sense of control and influence. Believe it or not, a powerful one-liner comes courtesy of English author A.A. Milne, better to be “promoted” through the voice of his best-known character – Winnie the Pooh: “You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” It is all a matter of perspective. And, equally, of full accountability and ownership, factoring in outcomes, personal meaning and context. American comedian George Burns agrees with Winnie the Pooh, from a slightly different angle, yet equally meaningful for change work: “I must be getting absent-minded. Whenever I complain that things aren't what they used to be, I always forget to include myself.”

Until next week, keep calm and pay attention to not being so present in the future that you become absent from the present.