A new mindset: Giving change a try

We all want things to improve, however, we do not want things to change. Why are we so afraid of change? How can we embrace it? What if change actually makes things worse?

The challenge of change

If you always do what you’ve always done, You’ll always get what you’ve always got ~ Henry Ford

Most improvements start with someone taking the initiative to propose an adjustment. The more people in your team take initiative, the faster your team will improve. Therefore, you will want to cultivate an environment in which everyone feels comfortable proposing new ideas.

However, that is easier said than done. Larger teams mean a higher chance of someone opposing new proposals. This is quite tricky: How do you proceed? Accepting the idea will make opponents feel unheard, while not accepting it will make the proposer feel unheard.

I have ended up as a frustrated proposer more than once. Either my ideas were not seriously considered, or I managed to push them through, but they still failed by lack of support. That is how I learned that an objectively better way of working can still end up worse if people do not get behind it.

This makes no sense, right? Who would not support an objective improvement?

The resistance is strong

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? ~ Bill Gates

People who oppose new proposals are not against improvement. There is more to it. I found there can be multiple reasons for people to resist change:

• Proposing an improvement implies that things are not optimal. Constructive criticism is still criticism. In some cases, suggestions for improvements can even be perceived as an attack. It requires trust to properly give and receive criticism. This trust is sometimes lacking within a team, for instance for new members or when going through a rough patch.
• Changing your way of working is hard. Changing your ways is hard. People are habitual animals, after all. Change requires effort and energy. During busy times, you simply might not have the headspace to actually grasp how a new idea could lead to improvement, let alone implement it.
• Change is not always an improvement. What if an adjustment actually makes things worse? That is a valid concern. After all, how can you know beforehand?

I have resisted change myself for all the reasons above. More than once, I have heard myself say things like: “You don’t have the full picture, our way of working is actually fine”, “We need to make that deadline, we don’t have time to work out a new process”, “This change will have us spend more time in meetings than actually working”…

How to embrace change

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. ~ Charles Darwin

We can turn to nature for inspiration on how to embrace change. All living things are constantly evolving and improving within the framework of their environment, caused by random mutations. And this process happens naturally: birds did not have a meeting to decide to grow wings, nor did humans have a master plan to grow a bigger brain. All of these changes are simply the result of a process of trial and error, a never-ending response to the parameters of the environment.

We can deal with new ideas in the same way as nature deals with random mutations. Try them out to see what works, and quickly undo the ones that don’t. I found that when you ask people to try out an idea for a limited time, they are much more willing to cooperate. Even the harshest of opponents will cooperate - if only to try and prove you wrong.

An environment for change

Without trust, we don’t truly collaborate; we merely coordinate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that transforms a group of people into a team. ~ Stephen Covey

From these insights, I developed a framework for change that has consistently worked for me. It consists of 4 steps:

1. Understand other parties. Not only does trying to understand show that you care about the other person, you are also showing respect for capabilities and past ideas. This helps lay the foundation for trust, which is indispensable.
2. Identify the problem. With sufficient trust, you should be able to discuss criticism on a process. Achieving a common understanding of a problem truly is the most important step of the process, as this creates a common desire to fix or improve things.
3. Propose an experiment. When the problem is agreed upon, you can propose to try out an idea to fix it. I prefer to start out with one or more experiments rather than to fully implement an idea right away. Such experiments can demonstrate whether an idea is actually good. And provided you reduce the scope and time well enough, it also costs less to adopt in terms of time, money, energy…
4. Evaluate. After discussing the results of the experiment, you can take the next steps: Are additional experiments needed? Should you formalize the process in a standard operating procedure (SOP)?

flowchart LR    
    Understand[Common
understanding]
    --> Problem[Problem
identification]
    --> Experiment[Execute
experiment]
    --> Evaluate[Evaluate
results]

After having implemented this framework in my team, a positive feedback loop soon emerged. The more people saw their ideas being tried out, the more receptive they became to others’ ideas as well. This has helped us to evolve from an environment where management proposed all new ideas to the team, to one where every single employer contributes ways to improve our workflow. This is something I am very proud of!

What about bad changes?

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. ~ Thomas A. Edison

Not all ideas are good, and not all experiments will turn out to be successful. You may have noticed that the framework above does not account for undoing changes. This is not a mistake in the framework - it is inherent to it.

First of all, ideas that pass the first two steps - understanding and identification - are rarely bad. At worst, I have seen them having no effect.

Second, once you managed to agree on the problem, you are one step further down the road. Even when your experiment fails, you won’t go back to the old situation. You should turn to the drawing board instead!

flowchart LR
    Understand[Common
understanding]
    --> Problem[Problem
identification]
    --> Experiment[Execute
experiment]
    --> Evaluate[Evaluate
results]
    
    Evaluate
    -->|iterate| Experiment

Next up

This framework is no silver bullet, and it does not solve all problems. However, many small improvements can lead to a big overall improvement. I hope this framework can help you and your team to improve as well!

In my next blogs, I will explore more topics related to continuous improvement, such as:

• How to deal with too many ideas?
• How to gain the understanding of others?
• How to evaluate an experiment?