Undertaking change is often a cause for both excitement and trepidation. In her Culture Leaders podcast series, our Dr. Jessica Kriegel talked to Change Management Strategist and Wharton Lecturer Greg Satell about a variety of issues related to large-scale change. Using a Q&A format, this article highlights three key questions and responses from that interview:
- Does Persuasion Enable Large-Scale Change?
- Does Resistance to Change Have a Positive Side?
- How Can You Promote Transformational Change?
(Note: Some questions and responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
Does Persuasion Enable Large-Scale Change?
Jessica Kriegel: You tackle one of the most interesting things in my field, which is culture transformation, including how to scale transformation. Everyone’s out there talking about how to change an individual mindset, yourself, or your individual team. But when you do it at scale, it becomes much more complex and confusing, with so many moving parts. So, can you educate us in really simple language as to how you create transformative change at scale based on what you’ve learned and what you know?
Greg Satell: Well, I think one of the points David McRaney made in his book How Minds Change is that that large-scale change is very different because it involves collective dynamics. And I think people often mistake one for the other. And it makes a lot of sense because if I’m formulating a message that can persuade you or persuade somebody else, then it seems like that type of persuasive message should work on a much broader scale. You just need to deliver that message to a lot more people. But fundamentally, that’s not how change works. The best indicator of things that we think and things that we do are what the people around us think and do. We have decades of research that show us that this applies even for behaviors like smoking or eating habits. It goes out to three degrees. So, not only our friends and their friends, but the friends of their friends’ friends influence what we think and do. It’s always important to follow the evidence, and the evidence says that you need to approach large-scale change, transformational change, very differently than personal change or persuasion.
Jessica Kriegel: So how, though, if it’s not a matter of just saying the same story to more people to create that persuasion in more minds? How do you actually get networks of people to transform?
Greg Satell: The first thing you need to understand is that persuasion is a red flag. The minute you have the urge to persuade somebody, you’re talking to the wrong people. You want to go to where the energy is thrown, in other words, to the people who are enthusiastic about change. So, the first thing is we sit down with an organization and advise them to start with that majority. Next, they need to identify current grievances because change always starts with the things people don’t like because they want them to be different. But you can’t stay mired in grievance. You need to come up with an affirmative vision for tomorrow, a concrete way you want things to be different. At the same time, you need to anticipate resistance.
Does Resistance to Change Have a Positive Side?
Jessica Kriegel: How do you go about identifying the different types of resistance you’re seeing and why is it so prevalent?
Greg Satell: One of the first exercises we walk people through is what we call a resistance inventory. It involves the different rational ways that people will resist and what form that resistance will take, and then how to develop strategies to mitigate that. The four forms of rational resistance include lack of trust, switching costs, competing incentives and commitments, and then change fatigue. Additionally, there’s a last category of resistance that’s completely irrational, which has to do with identity, dignity, and sense of self, because any time we ask people to change what they think or what they do, there will always be those who are going to work to undermine us in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. We all know that because we’ve all done it. Human beings form attachments to people, ideas, and things, and when those are threatened, we sometimes lash out in ways that don’t reflect our best selves. Anyone who’s ever been in a relationship or family knows that we all have that tendency.
Jessica Kriegel: What about the positive aspects of resistance to change in change management? Because I’ve always heard that when you have people who are resistant to change, they may be uncovering red flags or errors in judgment of those who are leading change, which can allow you to adjust the change plan to be more successful. So, there can be a lot of positivity in resistance to change. Do you see that in your research or do you make room for that in this model?
Greg Satell: That’s absolutely true. One of the strategies we suggest for dealing with resistance is what we call an internal red team. So, Jessica, if I think that you’re skeptical, I say that’s great that you’re skeptical. You make sure to keep us honest, right? In this way, you turn that resistance into something productive.
How Can You Promote Transformational Change?
Jessica Kriegel: How would you simplify the process of creating transformational change? What are the topics of those related bullet points? Where to start, what to do next, and how to wrap it up?
Greg Satell: It all falls under the blanket of follow the evidence. We know four things from decades of research and hundreds of studies:
- The first is that change always comes from outside, so anticipate and build a strategy to overcome resistance.
- The second is that shifts in knowledge and attitudes don’t necessarily result in a shift in in practice. We might know that a delicious chocolate brownie is bad for us. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to eat it.
- The third is that change follows an S-shaped curve. Often you see these big launch events and they show the S-shaped curve because everybody knows this is how change works. It starts off slowly, hits an inflection point, and then accelerates exponentially. We even know that that tipping point happens usually between 10% to 20% participation. Which raises the question, “Why are you doing this big launch event?” If you know things start slowly, your job is not to convince everybody at once, but to get to that 10% to 20% tipping point. Making a lot of noise and trying to start with the bang is much more likely to trigger resistance than it is to move you forward.
- The fourth is that change propagates socially from peer to peer. So, again, it’s not initially widespread communication; it’s always via small, loosely connected groups united by a shared purpose. As leaders, you can help those groups to connect and inspire them with purpose.
If you’d like to hear the full discussion, you can access the related podcast here:
Contact us to learn more about how to promote desired change and greater adaptability in your organization.
