Why Your Change Programs Aren't Working (and 5 ways to fix them)

Dear change leader -

I know why your change efforts aren’t working.

And how to fix them.

Now I know what you’re thinking.

Change is hard. People don’t like change. People resist change.

Our survival instincts trigger us to react to change and uncertainty with wariness. Change is a potential threat until proved otherwise.

But I’ve noticed something else.

There is a drive within us all of us, to evolve, grow, change and transform.

I’ve seen and heard it as I’ve coach and train people. And more recently as I’ve been doing a weekly #linkedinaudioevent on "Let’s Develop a Growth Mindset and Resilience at Work" with my partner Fi Hills we’ve noticed it. You can hear the pain and frustration in people’s voices:

People are hungry for change.

They are desperate for change.

And they want help to change.

Because right now everyone is struggling to make sense of change and manage the overwhelm of change in an exponentially changing world.

So it’s not that people don’t welcome change. They just want to have a choice in the changes they make. They don’t want to be forced to change.

The question is, why should they choose YOUR change?

There’s a classic change management model, ADKAR, which tells us the 5 things someone needs to make a successful change:

Awareness: why the change is needed

Desire: to get involved and support the change

Knowledge: of what to do in order to change

Ability: to apply the new knowledge, skills and behaviours

Reinforcement: of how to embed and sustain the change

All of these are vital but one element that often gets neglected is Desire. We think that just because we raise Awareness by telling people why “we must do this change in order to grow as a company (and not go out of business)” that this will be sufficient to evoke Desire.

But it’s not. Not by a long shot.

The Change Equation gives us a few more conditions that must be met for people to change:

Dissatisfaction with the status quo x a Vision of possibilities (which must be greater than the absence of pain) x simple, doable First steps towards the vision; all of these must be < Resistance to have any chance of Desire being sparked.

In my experience, dissatisfaction isn’t usually the problem. What we need to do is:

1.???Help people see that the proposed change will be better for them and that the benefits outweigh any shortcomings. Inspire them by appealing to their emotions, not just logic.

2.???Make the first steps toward the new change as easy as possible; break down the change until it’s manageable. Reassure people they will be given the help and support they need to learn and master any new skills and that they’re not alone - we will change together.

3.???Follow through on those promises to upskill people and create a culture and community of support to embed and sustain new habits and ways of working. This is vital because when people change it’s incremental, not transformational. Rarely do we wake up one morning, having decided to change and the change is made. Change is a process of becoming more aware of our thought patterns and habits and creating new beliefs and behaviours. Change is two steps forward, one step back, fall down get back up and try again.?Having support from others keeps us on track.

4.????Build psychological ownership by getting people involved in co-creating the change, because the more time and energy into we invest in something the more we value it. You only have to look at the success of digital products such as social media apps which have created psychological ownership, to see why this is such a strong strategy for change. Research into the effects of psychological ownership on whether people promote or resist change have found that individuals are most likely to support a change they feel ownership for when the change is “..self initiated (versus imposed), evolutionary (versus revolutionary), and additive (versus subtractive)” (Dirks KT and colleagues, 1996).

5.???Create a culture of continuous learning and psychological safety where people have the right mindset, resilience and skills (such as communication, creativity and leadership), to meet the challenges of exponential change head on. My partner Missak Vehouni calls this ‘priming people for change’. Imposing change may work in the short term, but in the long term it won’t last unless we create the right conditions to sustain it.

This is why everything I do is about supporting leaders to transform their mindset, resilience and skills so they in turn can transform their teams and their business. So they can create great places to work where people are learning, improving and innovating.?Workplaces where people have a purpose and are proud to be part of an organisation creating a better world.

?It’s also why I’m so excited about the work my colleagues and I at Mind Nudger AI are doing; we’re combining a proven methodology for positive culture change (EPIC - experiential, playful, iterative, collaborative) with the power of AI to help us speed up, scale and sustain learning and mindset transformation.

What difference can mindset transformation make?

·??The Journal of Organisational Behaviour (US) found that mindset transformation programmes linked to change initiatives report higher engagement, commitment and positive attitudes.

·??The Journal of Applied Psychology found that mindset transformation as part of a change initiative increases the success rate by over 32%, as well as increasing resilience and adaptability

·??The Journal of Applied Psychology also found that leadership programmes that included guided follow up ‘activities’ can lead to a 37% increase in leadership effectiveness.

·??The EPIC Methodology, used in all our mindnudging programs, has been validated on 35,000+ people worldwide (both F2F and virtuall) and proven to accelerate behaviour change 6-10x times faster than trainer centered methods.

What difference would it make if you were able to help your managers and teams shift even one attitude, bias or belief that’s holding them back from embracing change?!

One CEO recently told us that if we could just get his people to have more of a ‘can do’ mindset he wouldn’t need more. That would be enough to make the difference.

If any of this has resonated with you or you’d like to explore what sort of difference mindset transformation would make in your business comment below or DM me.

#growthmindset #culturechange #businesstransformation