Can't Change Nobody

Note from Kevin: I wrote this some years ago. As is true with most of my rants, this one was motivated by a meeting I had with a client. Truthfully, I can't remember which one, but I was obviously torqued-off about something to do with change. I stumbled across it the other day and thought it was worth airing out again. I’m less enamored with Kotter than I was then, (see The Four Journeys), but the points still ring true.

Can’t Change Nobody

There’s an old story about the scorpion and the frog. It’s probably been done at least once too many times, but it sets up a good point. Here’s how I remember it.

A frog and scorpion are standing next to a river. The scorpion wants a ride across the big water.

The frog says, "No dice. We’ll get halfway across, you’ll sting me, and I’ll die."

Brother scorpion debates the point. "If I do, and you do, we both drown.  Bad move on my part."

Sister frog concedes the logic and agrees to provide transportation.

Halfway across and the scorpion just can’t resist. Scorpion zaps frog.

"But, but, but," says the now dying and sinking frog.

"Couldn’t help it," says the now also sinking scorpion. "I’m a scorpion; it’s what I do."

A charming tale, particularly if you’re not the frog. But what does it mean?

One obvious conclusion is: don’t carry lethal creatures around on your back. Thinking a bit bigger, the story also points us towards the difficulty of getting someone to change. From the frog’s managerial vantage-point, it was another example of a change initiative gone awry. From the scorpion’s proletariat point of view, the need to change wasn’t nearly as compelling as the need to zap the frog.

Want to take it a step further?  When it came down to making a choice, internal motivation (oh boy, lunch) trumped the external carrot (get to the other side; go see grandma) and stick (don’t drown). It happened in the frog’s little world and it happens in just about every other organization you can name as well.

The Only Constant Is Pithy Quotes About Change

What’s not to like about change?  You change, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, and everything will be fine. This is a point of view with a nearly universal application.  Everyone in your organization can adopt it with the fervor of the true believer based on the rock-solid certainty that they’re not the problem.

If management would just get out of the way (change), I could actually do my job.

You need to work smarter, or harder, or faster, or something (change) so our team can meet its goals.

We need to become our client’s most trusted business partners (change) so we can deliver the increase in shareholder value we promised the analysts.

Here’s the good news.  In most cases, management has come to understand that simply telling folks that something needs to change isn’t nearly enough to get it done. 

At the most basic level, the Neanderthal method of change backs up managerial pronouncements with massive sticks and carrots designed to terrify or bribe the populace into submission. While this may create short-term compliance with the new vision and practices, it surely under-delivers on the large-scale buy-in and ownership that is so dear to the hearts of management savants and behavioral gurus.  It also tends to exact a steep cost from the poor folks who until yesterday were doing their best to comply with the vision of the previous regime.

More enlightened changeologists take a systems approach to dealing with change.  Following this line of thinking, if you change the systems, the hearts and minds will follow. Failure to change the systems and the disconnects between current state and future state will kill the frogs and the scorpions alike. A list of these subsystems might look like this:

• Executive Practices

• Managerial Practices

• Climate

• Organizational and Job Structure

• Information Flow

• Work Processes

• Performance Goals and Feedback

• Training and Education

• Rewards and Recognition

• Individual & Team Development

Fans of Peter Senge will want to weigh in here with system dynamics, delay mechanisms, balancing loops, and all the rest.  The undeniable appeal with both the O’Brien and Senge models is the fundamental belief that the system has a dynamic of its own.  It’s not people that are to blame; it’s the system.  People don’t need to change except to embrace learning.

Other change mavens subscribe to a more dynamic, leadership infused model that finds easy company with winning athletic and military analogies.  For example, John Kotter (Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press, 1996) proclaims for eight keys to driving change:

• Establish a sense of urgency.

• Build a guiding coalition.

• Develop a vision and strategy.

• Communicate the new vision (over and over).

• Empower broad-based action (get rid of obstacles and disconnects).

• Generate short-term wins and create recognition.

• Consolidate gains and produce more change.

• Anchor the new approach in culture.

In all cases the name of the game is change – employees, systems, and/or leaders – all in the name of creating a more perfect organization that will better serve the interests of the various stakeholders.

Changing How We View Change

All of this is pretty heady stuff.  If you have the time, you might map each of these models – or pick your own favorite – against the story of the frog and the scorpion and see where you come out.

 

Establish sense of urgency	Listen up brother scorpion.  If you don’t change how you view frogs right now, you’re not getting across the river.
Build guiding coalition	Scorpion’s dad, resident Owl philosopher, local big fish.
Develop vision and strategy	Visualize breakfast.  Visualize dinner with grandma.  Visualize anything other than frog’s legs.
Communicate new vision (over and over)	Have fish swim along side chanting over and over: get to grandma’s, super is waiting.
Empower broad-based action (get rid of obstacles and disconnects)	Get grandma on the other side of the river.  Brainwash scorpion.  Serve snacks on voyage across river.  Paint frog fluorescent pink of some equally unappetizing color.
Generate short-term wins: recognition	Hand out humanitarian award halfway across.  Serve more snacks.  Show a movie.
Consolidate gains and produce more change	Airlift scorpion before temptation becomes too great.  Two-week vacation in Maui for Frog.
Anchor new approach in culture	Return to starting point and try again, this time with ten scorpions.

 

Having done that, aren’t you just left with the sinking feeling that there’s more to change than change? Or to put the issue more starkly, can you really get people to change?

I ask a question in one of my workshops that goes something like this: If I were to ask you spouse (significant other, consort, partner, pal) how hard it is to get you to change, what would they say?  Well you can just imagine the gales of laughter that one generates. Yet those same people will point with pride to how they’ve grown over the years in almost any area you care to name. Funny how that works. 

People don’t want to change but do want to grow.  Is it possible we should think less about change and more about growth?  Without wanting to lampoon our point, shouldn’t there be some sort of Zen-like mantra that sounds something like: He who would change must seek to grow first?

Herzberg addresses this dichotomy with his theory of job dissatisfiers and satsifiers. Briefly, he defines these as follows:

Dissatisfiers:  People want to avoid pain from the environment.  The inability to do that is what creates dissatisfaction.

The list of potential job dissatisfiers might look and sound like this:

 

Dissatisfiers	Sounds Like
Company policy and administration	Paperwork is killing me.
Supervision	I’m getting picked on.
Relationship with supervisor	He/she doesn’t like me; value me; add value to me; understand my problems.
Work conditions	I can’t get anything done around here.
Salary	I’m not getting paid enough to put up with this.
Relationship with peers	What a bunch of incompetents.
Personal life	I don’t need this.  I can get this at home.
Relationship with subordinates	Can’t anybody figure anything out themselves?
Status	I’m better than he is.
Security	You kill yourself and for what?

 

This list is striking in its similarity to both the Kotter and O’Brien view of change enabling. Surely it’s not a great leap to conclude that the first key to creating the possibility of change – or growth – is to remove as many systemic sources of job dissatisfaction (or job disconnection) as possible. Great start, but only half the equation if you buy into the notion that the most profound force for change is growth.  For that, it may be useful to focus some attention on the second piece which is satisfiers.

Satisfiers: People have the capacity for psychological growth.  The ability to achieve creates the desire to achieve.

That list might look something like this:

 

Satisfiers	Sounds Like
Achievement	I did a good job; I met the challenge; I made a difference.
Recognition	Somebody noticed and somebody cared.
Work itself	I like what I do.
Responsibility	I’m a decision maker.  I don’t get second-guessed.
Advancement	I’m not stuck.
Growth	I’m better today than I was yesterday.

 

If Work Is So Terrific, Why Do They Call It Work?

If you buy into Herzberg, you can’t help but conclude that folks bring tons of intrinsic motivation to work, only to have much of it choked off by the storm of disconnects and dissatisfiers that can often cloud the workplace and the meaning of work. No argument here with the notion of fixing the sub-systems. Doing this creates the necessary conditions for change. But to create the effect most managers want ultimately takes something more. It takes linking up to their peoples’ built-in desire for growth, recognition, achievement, and meaning. 

So what does that mean you should do?  Without a doubt you need to attend to the basic systems issues that folks like Senge, O’Brien, and Kotter call for. To those models we’d offer the following amplifications.

Witches, Wizards, and Yellow Brick Roads

Laying out powerful visions of the future is no more than one third the battle (The Future State). Of equal weight is a shared understanding of the current state and why it’s no longer a tenable position for everyone involved. So too is the need to clearly understand what lies on the road from here to there (The Gap). Let us toss in another analogy here. 

 Perhaps you’ll recall the story of the Wizard of Oz.  The goal was easy: our friend with the little dog wanted to get home. The current state was equally well understood. Hanging around waiting for the lady in the black hat and the broomstick to grab the shoes didn’t sound like fun. Once she understood the part about the yellow bricks and the Emerald City, she was ready to go.

The Heck With Stakeholders, What’s In It For Me?

This is the part about the satisfiers. Yes you can drag folks along with you on the strength of carrots and sticks but it’s hard and it’s messy. Given the choice, wouldn’t you rather have some large percent of your team pulling, pushing, clawing, and growing in the same direction? The solution is to give as much thought to thinking through how individuals win at a personal level – achievement, recognition, meaningful work, responsibility, advancement, and growth – as you do thinking about systems, strategies, and shareholder value.

 Back to Oz. Dorothy’s journey was made easier by the addition of fellow travelers with different but conjoining goals (yes, I know, the Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion were really just parts of her own psyche). Flying monkeys, talking trees, and those darn poppies posed problems along the way but in the end were no match for the little team because everyone was bought in to the journey for their own reasons.

I’m Right Beside You

In times of great stress and change, individuals need coaches (think Good Witch). They need to see these coaches right in the game with them. They need to know the coaches have their own limbs in the game. They need to feel a sense of connection to their coaches – something I call a covenant. They need to know way down inside that the coach is committed to their growth and success. This creates a powerful sense of reciprocity which in turn creates the kind of commitment and follow-through that is so necessary in a high rate of change environment.

I define coaching in three ways:

Coaching: Everything you do that adds value to your people so they can add value to your customers and your firm.

Coaching: Everything you do that helps your people grow, change, and succeed in a changing environment.

Coaching: Collaborating with your people to create mutual wins.

You Can Lead a Horse, To Water, But You Can’t Make Him Swim

By definition, even modest change usually means individual performers will need to learn new skills, models, and tools in order to survive and thrive in the brave new world. Almost by lucky coincidence, training, when it’s done right, has the salutary effect of fueling many of the satisfiers we’re trying to engage.  On both counts, it’s almost inconceivable to think about launching a change initiative without accompanying it with the training needed to support individual growth.

Beware The Unintended Consequences

One of the surefire laws of change is that whatever you planned for probably won’t happen – at least not exactly like you intended. And whatever you didn’t plan for probably will happen. You can account for this with systems theory, Murphy’s law, Karma, or the law of cruelty of objects (the distance a dropped coin will roll away from you is directly proportionate to the value of the coin). 

 No matter, your change initiative needs a Dennis Rodman. Really? Someone with really strange hair and tattoos?  Maybe, but we were thinking more about someone with his ability to rebound other people’s missed shots. There will be misses.  Think about having folks standing by to help keep the ball in play.

If Change Were Easy, Everyone Would Do It

The frog and the scorpion form a stark contrast with Dorothy and her pals. The Frog really wanted to believe that the Scorpion would change. The two of them even had a nice long talk about change prior to the big swim. It still didn’t work. A big problem compounded by the fact that there was no chance for a rebound – the unintended consequences in this case were fatal.

Dorothy’s journey to Oz presents a vastly different picture – yes, in part because it was told to illustrate a different set of lessons.  Having said that, it’s hard not to take note of the sound systems dynamics, the strong personal connection with the journey and the destination, the presence of a coach (the Good Witch), the willingness and ability to learn, and the resiliency of the team in the face of all manner of inexplicable obstacles.

No doubt your organization is or will face the need for some sort of change in the near future. Frogs and scorpions or Oz and the yellow brick road.  Change or growth. When they write the story of change in your organization, what story will they tell about you?