Change is hard and there are plenty of barriers and obstacles that can get in the way of it. Understanding them is the first step to overcoming them.
It seems hard to imagine a time when the cassette playing Sony Walkman ruled supreme, the ultimate high-tech innovation that allowed people to listen to music on the go. A game changer indeed. The future, it might have seemed, was cassette shaped. Then along came the CD, MP3 players, the iPod and iPhones, streaming and Spotify.
With Sony’s heritage, brand, technology and channels, we might think that the iPod should have been a Sony product. But it was Steve Jobs and Apple who recognised that the potential of portable digital music could be unlocked only by an entirely new business model and not just a better MP3 player.
This particular battle of the ear pods is not the first time that a major player has been usurped by an upstart disruptor, and it probably won’t be the last. The business world is awash with tales of titans of industry that seemed unable and unwilling to change course and stubbornly went down with their ship, having been blindsided by new competitors with the will and the tech know-how to overtake them.
So why have these organisations and their leaders found change so hard? If change is a process, then it’s one that comes with plenty of barriers and obstacles along the way.
Some of these are about that process itself: an ill-defined, badly planned and supported, or poorly communicated change initiative is unlikely to overcome the odds and smash all records for success.
Then there’s that organisational inability or unwillingness to adapt and reinvent, manifesting itself in things as diverse – and catastrophic – as product obsolescence or firing capable people rather than reskilling or upskilling them for new and emerging roles.
Other barriers are about us as people: our emotions, biases and tendency to cling to the status quo that militate against moving towards change. We may know that change is good, that change means growth, that doing nothing is not a real option, but it doesn’t always feel like that. For most of us, change is a threat and our natural reaction is to be defensive. As the Chinese proverb puts it: “When the winds of change blow, most people build walls. Only a few build windmills.”
And even when we’ve worked though our own – and others’ – aversion to change, we might suffer from the opposite problem, finding ourselves in an organisation where change seems to be endemic: do we really need another new system or what seems like the nth departmental reorganisation this year? Change fatigue can be a real problem.
All in all, it’s perhaps a miracle that any change initiatives at work prevail at all. How, then, can we understand the barriers that get in the way and improve our chances of overcoming them? If we need to change and innovate to survive and thrive, how can we navigate the obstacles that get in the way?
Back to those Sony Walkmans. The rate of change in how we source and play music is a great example of what Harvard professor, Clayton Christensen, calls “disruptive innovation”. In his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma, Christensen offers an explanation for why the people and organisations like those riding high on the cassette tape boom found it so difficult to adapt, change and innovate, in this case as technology started to enable new ways to access the music we want to play.
As so often with incumbents, the people holding existing market share, their dilemma revolved around how and when to innovate and change without cutting across the success they were already enjoying.
Christensen believes that the tendency is for incumbents to focus on “sustaining innovations” to build on that success – the CD and Sony Discman, perhaps – rather than thinking outside the box or exploring seemingly less lucrative markets.
But this leaves room for new entrants to develop and grow, at small scale and with minimal returns at first, until, eventually, these disruptive innovators gain the momentum to allow them to catch up with, and overtake, the incumbents who are focusing more on the upper end of the market.
It has been suggested that innovation typically follows a simple model, known as an S curve, that identifies the lifecycle of a product through launch, growth and maturity, when growth is likely to tail off — a pattern that looks like the letter ‘S’. Technology has enabled a series of shorter, overlapping curves where the opportunities for change and innovation might be greater — but so is the potential for incumbents to enter dangerous “dilemma zones”.
Christensen set out to find out why even large organisations with huge resources fail to capitalise on the opportunities created by new tech. His answer, it seems, is that it’s often just too difficult to take a chance on jumping down to the bottom of the next S curve, with all the risks and challenges that implies, when the going is still pretty good. A dilemma indeed – and a powerful barrier to organisational change.
So, what to do? Not all of us can work for an upstart disruptor with the confidence to take a punt on the next big thing. Fortunately, there are some antidotes to the dilemma that can help us to counteract it.
We might, for example, embrace ambidexterity, the idea that we need cultures able both to exploit an organisation’s current capabilities and explore new opportunities for the future.
With a nod to the dilemma, ambidexterity understands that there is always a balancing act between a focus on efficiency and short-term goals to remain competitive and exploration that might need more autonomy to achieve long-term goals and take risks. How that balance looks will depend on the stability of our business environment (or not), but just focusing on the here and now is not really an option.
The idea that we need to manage current performance while planning for future opportunities for growth is also encapsulated in the McKinsey & Company Three Horizons model.
Created by Mehrdad Baghai, Stephen Coley and David White in their 2000 book The Alchemy of Growth, the model can help organisations to visualise that balance between now and the future. It identifies three different types of change – or horizons – in a “staircase of initiatives” that we need to focus on if we are to stay ahead of the game.
Horizon 1 (H1) is about incremental improvements or continuous innovation around a company’s existing products, models, or core capabilities.
Horizon 2 (H2) innovations are about next generation products that extend existing business model or core capabilities to new markets or customers.
Horizon 3 (H3) innovations are entirely new, breakthrough products or categories that are pushing the boundaries, responding to or taking advantage of disruption, and exploring new markets or technologies.
Each horizon requires different management, focus and goals. To remain competitive, we need to operate across all three horizons at the same time.
Originally, the model also identified likely time frames for each horizon, with H1 changes more immediate and H3 further out on the horizon. However, for US professor, Steve Blank, writing in a 2019 Harvard Business Review article, the world today is such that the three horizons are no longer “bounded by time”.
It might once have taken years to bring an H3-style innovation to market, but that is no longer the case: speed has become an essential component of the disruptive change that happens at the outer horizon. We need think no further than Uber or Airbnb to see that speed in action.
Blank believes that incumbents need to prepare themselves to counter such rapid disruption. But how? If we’re facing competition from new entrants who do not have the same legacy technologies, systems and processes, how can we move more quickly to create, and benefit from, faster, more disruptive change and innovation ourselves?
One proposed answer is the concept of corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. This is the idea that we should create separate, change-facing teams and units within existing organisations to focus on H3-type innovation. The 'new' business is distinct from the parent organisations, and often involves external partners and resources, sometimes through acquisition. But it still shares the assets, capabilities or other resources that the wider organisation has to offer.
This would seem to give organisations the best of both worlds: fleet-of-foot innovation units combined with the stability and resources of an established business. In reality, the results are often less positive, with clashes of culture, competition for scarce resources and lack of buy-in for the different financial – and other – performance criteria for these new units just some of the problems corporate entrepreneurship has encountered.
If it comes to a choice of doubling down on what we know we can sell at a decent margin today and investing in new and unproven new ideas with an unclear financial profile, even the best-laid intrapreneurship plans might come to nothing.
Because of these potential pitfalls, corporate entrepreneurship has to be carefully nurtured if it is to work. It can’t just be left to chance; it needs high-level buy-in, the right culture and clear rules of engagement to prevail. And this brings us back to people, whether we’re tasked with developing and using our entrepreneurial outlook as an intrapreneur, we have to hold our nerve when facing a dilemma zone or we simply have to get on board with the need to change in the first place.
Boston Consulting Group’s Martin Reeves and Michael Deimler remind us that “in a world of constant change, the spoils go to the nimble”. In their call for organisations to become more adaptable, they identify four characteristics that “foster rapid adaptation”.
The ability to find, read and act on signals of change – to be proactive, and respond accordingly.
The willingness to experiment rapidly and frequently – whether that’s around products and services or business models, processes and strategies.
The ability to manage – and harness - complex and interconnected webs of multiple stakeholders.
Knowing how to motivate our people and partners.
Whether or not corporate entrepreneurship is a useful structure for solving the innovator’s dilemma and facilitating organisational change, it will only work if, as organisations, we adopt and live the right culture and values and, as individuals, we adopt the right mindset.
Lisa Bodell, CEO of FutureThink, believes that, if organisations are going to get better at change, we need to create leaders who have the right mindset, open to new ideas rather than being 'professionals sceptics', afraid of the risks involved in going into the unknown.
Instead, we need to see the possibilities in new ideas and challenge our deep-seated assumptions. And when it comes to change, we need to get everyone on board with identifying the opportunities for the new and then supporting them to make it happen.
To do that, we also need to understand the personal barriers that can get in the way of change.
Sometimes, a simple model encapsulates perfectly a challenge or opportunity we might face as leaders. When it comes to how our colleagues might react to change, there’s no better metaphor than The Change House, originally a four-room apartment where people facing change moved through a series of rooms from denial and confusion to renewal and contentment.
Over the years, the model has been added to, acknowledging that people’s response to change is far from linear and that the average change project might occasion several visits to the pit of paralysis or the cellar of despair before we reach the sunny uplands of the contentment deck.
Change is hard. Because it involves a transition from where we are now to somewhere new – and especially when we might not know what the somewhere new might look like – it’s often about difficult emotions such as loss and uncertainty. Faced with those, we might choose to avoid or resist it rather than move towards it, even when we understand intellectually that change is both necessary and desirable.
As a leader, we may have not just to face our own fears around change, but also understand how others are feeling and take steps to address their concerns and bring them on board. While some people might relish and embrace change, finding it motivating and energising, others will feel challenged and under threat.
Because of this mix of emotions, change is unlikely to succeed if it’s imposed on people from above. As the old joke goes, “How many psychoanalysts does it take to change a lightbulb? Just one. But the lightbulb has to want to change.” Our job as a change leader is to help people reach that state.
It’s perhaps no accident that one of the most famous change models is based on psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s work on the five stages of grief experienced by terminally ill people. Since then, the model has been adapted to reflect the emotions that people tend to go through in response to organisational change. If we understand these stages, then we’ll be better placed to respond to how people might be feeling and to support them along the curve.
The curve plots people’s response to change over time. Not all changes will evoke the full range of emotions on the change curve. Some people will move through the stages more quickly; others will take more time or tend to get “stuck” along the way. Progress is not necessarily linear, and we may slip back along the curve at times if the going gets tough.
It’s possible, though, to use the curve to craft leadership responses that will help people along the way and feel more comfortable and engaged with the transition.
Shock and denial
When something happens which requires us to change or a change initiative is first announced, people might experience shock. Many people will feel uncertain and disoriented.
After the initial shock has passed, people often move to the denial phase. We might hear things like “I can’t believe it” or “that just won’t work”. Many might feel that there’s nothing wrong with how things are and that the change simply isn’t necessary. They may feel threatened by the change or afraid of what might happen next.
Our response at this stage is all about creating alignment. We need to reassure and support people, communicating our vision for the change clearly and regularly. We will only create alignment if we can tell people why the change is happening, what we’re looking to achieve and what will happen next and in the coming weeks and months. It’s about making a clear case for change.
Frustration
Once the initial stages are over, people might understand that the change really is happening and move on to frustration or even anger or bitterness: “what a waste of time”; “it’s just typical”. People might be suspicious and sceptical.
This is where we need to maximise our communication. We need to listen to people’s concerns and respond openly and honestly. We might have to adapt our messaging, the media we use and our style of communication to make sure the message is hitting home.
Depression
The lowest point of the change curve comes when people start to realise that the change is going to happen whether they like it or not. Morale will be low and people may feel anxious and doubt themselves. They may fixate on a particular aspect of the change, withdraw or seem unable or unwilling to move on.
Moving people on from the depression phase will need us to spark every ounce of motivation we can. What might make the change seem less daunting or unpalatable? This will be different for different people, so we’ll need to consider what might spark motivation for different individuals. We also need to be observers, looking out for non-verbal signs that people are finding the change difficult.
This is also a time to deploy our change champions, people who already understand and support the change and will be moving along the curve at a faster rate. People who have something in common with resisters can be especially powerful; the sense that “we’re all in this together and it’s going to be OK” will help.
For example, if Dave in Accounts is worried that his job may be on the line because of a new financial system, having someone doing a similar job advocating on its behalf is much more likely to convince Dave than anything we might say to try to bring him around.
Experiment
If we can move people out of the depths of depression and accept that the change is inevitable, they should start to feel more optimistic, even enthusiastic. They may feel that “it’s not so bad after all” or even start to see the benefits and positives, experimenting with the possibilities the change might offer.
To build on this more positive engagement, we need to make sure people have the resources and capabilities to make the change happen. This might be training or reskilling, or simply the time to work through the opportunities the change might provide. It’s about giving people the practical support they need to try the change on.
Decision
This is when people make the conscious decision to accept the change, or at least be prepared to give it a go. They start to buy into the vision and see clearly the benefits the change is bringing: “ah, now I see”.
People at the decision or acceptance stage are our ultimate change champions. We want them to share what they’ve learnt while we continue to communicate too, building on the vision with real-world examples of how the change is playing out.
Once people reach this stage of the curve, they’re ready to start moving towards the new state that the change will bring, integrating the change into their everyday work.
We need to continue to communicate at and beyond this stage, lest uncertainty, disenchantment or doubt move people back down the curve. Regular progress reports, celebrating wins and milestones, ongoing support and reassurance will all help to embed the change.
In their book, Switch, authors Chip and Dan Heath offer more useful insight into why lasting change is so hard – and what we can do to improve the chances of success.
According to the Heath brothers, the primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains between our rational and emotional minds. Our rational mind might want to change something at work, or be ready to embrace it, but our emotional brain loves the comfort of an existing routine we know well or the kudos that comes from a task we’re good at. It’s a tension that can get in the way of change unless we can overcome it.
The authors call the rational side of our brain The Rider. It provides direction and does the planning.
The emotional side of the brain is The Elephant. It’s instinctive and feels pain and pleasure.
Without a clear path, the Elephant will get in the way of change. And, if the Rider falls prey to its tendency to over analyse and overthink things, it’ll be unable to provide the direction the Elephant will need to change. Change is only possible when both Rider and Elephant come together: “If you want to change things, you’ve got to appeal to both. The Rider provides the planning and direction, and the Elephant provides the energy.”
To do this, we need to adopt a clear change framework:
Direct the Rider: provide crystal clear direction.
This involves strategy and rationalising, using three key tactics:
discover and build on “bright spots”, successes we can build on to make the case for change.
focus on what’s absolutely critical to help the Elephant see the wood for the trees; ambiguity won’t help.
be clear about the destination: what’s the purpose of the change, our vision. Unequivocal destination “postcards” show the Rider where we’re going and the Elephant why the journey is worthwhile.
Motivate the Elephant: engage the emotional side.
The Elephant hates uncertainty, dislikes failure, is easily daunted or demoralised and craves progress. It is strongly influenced by identity, the kind of people we are, what we like to do and are good at, and how we want people to perceive us. Any challenge to that identity can be a real barrier to change.
To overcome these biases, we need to motivate the Elephant by:
understanding that Elephants need to feel the change. Rational appeals won’t work on their own. In one study, John Kotter and Dan Cohen observed that, in almost all successful change efforts, the sequence of change is not analyse-think-change, but rather see-feel-change. We need to find the right feeling for the Elephant to get on board. That might be excitement, the negative feelings that come from not making a change or, for more open-ended problems or opportunities, open-mindedness, creativity, and hope.
shrinking the change: play to the Elephant’s need for progress by breaking down bigger change initiatives into more accessible, bite-sized chunks. Think quick wins and achievable milestones.
building rapport. Stanford University’s James March says that when people make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of decision-making: the consequences model or the identity model. The consequences model assumes that when we have a decision to make, we rationally weigh the costs and benefits of our options and make the choice that maximises our satisfaction. In the identity model of decision-making, we essentially ask ourselves three questions when we have a decision to make: Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do in this situation?
If we can get people to align their identity or self-image with the change - “I aspire to be the kind of person who would make this change” – then we’re well on the way to getting people on board.
Shape the Path: create the conditions for both the Rider and the Elephant to excel. That means:
tweaking the environment: creating cultures and processes that enable the right behaviours and discourage less helpful ones.
helping people to build positive habits with tools such as checklists.
rallying the herd: because we tend to take our cues from others, use the behaviours of the majority to encourage those who are more resistant.
recognising and celebrating success to help embed and normalise the change.
Creating the right environment will help the Rider and the Elephant to work in harmony, take the sting out of change and make success more likely.
Where change is badly handled, or there is a perception that organisations are changing for change’s sake, people can suffer from change fatigue. Unsurprisingly, this is not a state that boosts engagement, productivity or wellbeing. It might manifest itself in people holding back from getting involved in new ideas or initiatives, being negative about other people’s ideas, low morale – or even voting with their feet and leaving. If we don’t tackle these behaviours, they can become contagious.
The answer to change fatigue is not to avoid change when it’s needed. But we must be clear about the purpose and need of any change we’re leading. If we can’t justify it to ourselves, it’ll be hard to convince others.
A compelling vision will help to sell even the most open-ended change project. Be proactive, anticipate objections and outline the change’s potential benefits. Have a clear plan and share it. “Shrink” large-scale change into manageable chunks. More than anything, take every opportunity to involve people in change and to help them to see that they’re part of the solution.
Whether we’re an organisation contemplating a dilemma zone or a leader with a team member stuck at the depression stage of the Kubler-Ross change curve, it’s clear that taking the leap of faith that comes with change or innovation can be daunting and difficult. But if we are to avoid the fate of the Sony Walkman, we have no choice but to learn how to embrace change – and encourage our people to do the same. Understanding the barriers that can get in the way of change is the first step to overcoming them.
JFK reminded us that “change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future”. There’s a future out there for all of us: we just need to take that leap and find it.
Explain why organisations often fall foul of the ‘dilemma zone’.
Outline the stages of the Kubler-Ross change curve.
Describe what Chip and Dan Heath mean by The Rider and The Elephant.
Try using the Three Horizons model to map out a future for your organisation or team. What are your priorities? How would you balance short-term gain with long-term future-proofing?