Immunity to change: why nothing changes when you sincerely want to change
A foot on the gas, a foot on the brake, a lot of energy, and no result
A persistent conundrum in the life of organizations is how difficult it is for them to change. Often it's not for lack of trying. Rather, the difficulty comes from the very way they try to change, focusing their efforts in the wrong place, and mostly ignoring the real cause of the blockage.
There is a paradox in the life of organizations. In a sense, they are constantly changing. Their life is a hurricane of initiatives, projects, plans. But this change often hides a great difficulty in changing the bottom line, i.e. the business model, in the face of ruptures in their environment. They seem to be the perfect illustration of the aphorism of the Lampedusa Cheetah: everything must change for nothing to change. And yet I have never met an organization that does not want to change. They all want to innovate and transform. In fact, they all have a plan for that, with axes, pillars, objectives, a vision, a mission, a raison d'être and lots of kakemonos, powerpoint, pins and associated wallpapers. And yet nothing changes. Why is that?
To understand this, let's take the example of Richard, a manager of a large pharmaceutical company, whom I met during a recent seminar. In the workshop on blockages that I run, I ask participants to identify an important objective for their business that they are having trouble achieving. Richard's goal is for his team to be more engaged. He feels that his employees are relatively passive. He laments their lack of initiative, which weighs on results. “Very well, I tell him. Now make a list of all the things you do, or fail to do, that could explain their lack of involvement.” It's not an easy exercise, but finally something emerges: "I never ask their opinion when I have to make a decision." Indeed, this seems to explain the problem well: knowing that Richard is not going to ask their opinion, his employees do not try to propose it. Knowing that his employees are not going to offer their opinion, Richard finds it justified not to ask for it. Everyone watches helplessly as performance deteriorates without the ability to change.
Big belief
At this stage of the investigation, the mistake would be to look for a solution - in management, we are obsessed with finding solutions. We must resist this, and look at Richard's failure to ask his employees for their input not as the cause of the problem, but as the symptom of another problem. In other words, you have to ask yourself why Richard doesn't ask for their opinion. Which I do. Again, it takes a while for the answer to emerge, but Richard, a little embarrassed, finally puts it this way: “I'm afraid of undermining my authority if I ask my employees for their opinion”. “Ah, I reply, that sounds perfectly understandable. And what makes you think your authority will be undermined?” “Well, I think a leader should have the answers, that's his role.”
Here we are. Richard has just identified his big belief or assumption, the mental model he has of what being a leader means. For him, a leader is the one who has the answers to the tough questions. At this point, it is essential to recognize with him that this is not a silly answer at all. It is a defensible view of leadership. What Richard must recognize, however, is that this definition is not universal. Other leaders may have a different view. Indeed, after a few minutes of discussion, he mentions the name of another leader in his company who never hesitates to ask for advice to her team in difficult situations. From this, Richard can deduce that there are leaders who ask questions without their leadership being challenged. He can then examine his “a leader is the one who has the answers to the tough questions” mental model in a dispassionate way and create space by telling himself, in fact, that this is not necessarily true. From there, he can imagine calling on his team without fear of being challenged.
This example shows why looking for a solution once the initial cause has been identified would be premature. If we had stopped at the first step, we would have sought to help Richard ask questions to his team, perhaps through active listening training, or coaching sessions. We would have tried to provide a technical solution whereas the problem is systemic. By forcing him to engage his team, we would have only increased his fear of having his authority undermined. He would have played along for a while, but no matter how sincere his efforts, his fear would have eventually taken over, and his need for protection would have won out. This is why we talk about immunity to change. Because, in fact, by not soliciting his team, Richard has created a system that works well for him, that protects him, and that he therefore wants to perpetuate: of course, he is sorry for the lack of initiative, but his psychological security is preserved. His system works in a local optimum: it preserves his security, but it prevents innovation, which condemns him in the long run. A technical solution will not solve this security issue. Only by questioning the source of the problem, Richard's conception of leadership, can the situation be unblocked. This means going back to the mental model, i.e. the way Richard sees the world (in this case the world of leadership).
This approach works at the individual level but also at the collective level. Kodak invested billions of dollars in its digital transition in the 1990s, but its big belief was that it must remain the number one player in the photo market, whether film or digital. So, the vast majority of investment continued to go into film, which doomed the company.
Conflict of commitments
At the heart of the difficulty to change is rarely a lack of will or unconsciousness. Everyone knows you need to exercise to avoid heart problems. No one wants to die, yet few people actually exercise. It's not a knowledge problem. The problem is that changing challenges something that works well for us, that famous system that, even if it is suboptimal, satisfies us in the short term. The problem comes from a conflict of commitments: an explicit commitment to change (I want my team to be more engaged), and another commitment, usually implicit, to protect (I want to preserve my authority). Both commitments are sincere, and the conflict exists because of the fear that generates the need for protection. It is this fear that we need to work on, and it is based on our mental models.
The concept of immunity to change is presented in the book “Immunity to change” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey.