Imagine you're making popcorn on the stove. You heat the oil and put in the kernels. Too little heat and the kernels don't pop. Too much heat and the popcorn isn't edible because it's burned. Just the right amount of heat makes a yummy treat!
Heat is the catalyst for change.
It's the same for our teams and organizations.
You're in the regular weekly update meeting and the boss checks in on how everyone is doing with the newly installed system-wide software. One team member speaks up and says they don't like it and wish they still had the old software. Fifteen minutes later you're all still talking about something that's gone and impossible to bring back. While most people have adopted the new way of doing things it's clear some influential people are holding back the change initiative. To explain why let's go back to the popcorn example.
Too hot!
Too much heat on any change initiative causes fear to emerge and our fight/flight/freeze response activates. We've hit our tolerance which limits our ability to connect with why we should change in the first place.
Not enough heat...
Too little heat on any change initiative and you have no action in the new direction. People don't feel any urgency to change so we get comfortable avoiding it.
Just right ð
The right amount of heat opens our creativity and imagination to adapt to the changes we're experiencing.
Change is happening at a pace humans haven't felt before, especially in our professional lives. Here's a bit of what is changing fast...
- Moving from a 9-5 work day to working anytime
- From working in an office to working anywhere
- Using company equipment to use any device we want
- From a focus on inputs to outputs
- Climb the career ladder to make your ladder
- Defined work to customized work
- Holding onto information to sharing information
- Having little voice to seeing everyone as a leader
- Rely on email to reliance on collaborative technologies
- Focus on knowledge to adaptive learning
- Corporate training to democratized learning and teaching
To be adaptive to challenges requires constant learning to find solutions. To be adaptive we need to think and act experimentally. Often, changes require longer-term commitment so we must adjust our expectations on making progress. For changes to stick, we must build confidence in the new skills with a curiosity mindset.
The main obstacles to any change initiative are certainty and fear. When we're certain about how things should go we keep curiosity from happening. If we get the "heat" wrong we've introduced fear which drives contrary behavior to change adoption.
In an annual message to Congress on December 1, 1862, one month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln shared these words:
"We can succeed only by concert. It is not "can any of us imagine better?" but, "can we all do better?" The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."
All these situations will require something different from all of us to move the change forward. Keep your intention on what you really want and be open to helping everyone rise with the occasion!
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