"Be the change you want to see in the world"

I have been spending the last few posts discussing a couple of really great articles on change management that appeared in McKinsey Quarterly.  The first article by Emily Lawson and Colin Price ("The psychology of change management") suggests that there are four basic conditions that are critical to the success of any organization-wide change initiative: (1) A compelling "change story"; (2) Role modeling; (3) Reinforcing mechanisms; and (4) Capability building.  Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller ("The irrational side of change management") discussed some additional insights that are necessary for successful change.  For example, when creating a compelling "change story", Aiken and Keller would add that the "change story" needs to (1) Be told in five different ways; (2) Be developed by the members of the team (and not by the leader); and (3) Leverage both positive motivation and the sense of urgency to take full advantage of human psychology.

With today's post, I want to focus on Lawson and Price's second basic condition - role modeling.  The social scientist Everett Rogers first described how new ideas and technologies (i.e., innovation) spread throughout different social systems (a concept he called "diffusion") in a book called Diffusion of Innovations (now in its fifth edition) in 1962.  Rogers first defined the five adopter categories (including perhaps the best known - "early adopters" and "laggards") with the following depicting the diffusion of new ideas over time:

Rogers also discussed the different elements in a social system that increased either the likelihood of diffusion or the pace of diffusion.  He talked about the importance of "opinion leaders" who are highly influential in spreading either positive or negative information about a new idea or technology.  Whether you call them "opinion leaders", "influence leaders", "change agents", or "change champions", these individuals serve as role models for new and desired behaviors that are necessary to drive change in the organization.  There's no question that having the support of respected, influential leaders in an organization is helpful.  Lawson and Price argue that these change agents are critical to the success of any change initiative.  However, there are a couple of points (emphasized by Aiken and Keller) that are important to keep in mind.

There is a well-known and frequently repeated quote by the late Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, "Be the change you want to see in the world."  Intuition would tell us that organizational leaders are ideally positioned to serve as "change agents" and should take the necessary steps to not only role model the desired changes and behaviors ("be the change"), but also mobilize the key opinion leaders within an organization to drive change ("lead the change").  While true in theory, the reality is far different.  The explanation is rather simple - most individuals don't think that they are the ones who need to change!

 It is a fact of human nature that we all think that we are better than we really are, which is known in psychology as self-serving bias (somewhat related to something known as the fundamental attribution error).  We tend to attribute our successes to our own character or actions, but blame failures on external factors that are beyond our control.  For example, the American Automobile Association released a survey showing that 8 out of 10 men think they are above-average drivers.  Another survey found that 65% of Americans believe that they are above-average in intelligence (calling to mind the radio show A Prairie Home Companion's fictional town of Lake Wobegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average").

As Aiken and Keller write, "Whereas conventional change management approaches surmise that top team role modeling is a matter of will ('wanting to change') or skill ('knowing how to change'), the inconvenient truth is that the real bottleneck to role modeling is knowing 'what' to change at a personal level."  In order to serve as an effective role model, leaders need to overcome the self-serving bias and recognize that they need to change just as much as the organization.  Notably, Gandhi also said, "For things to change, first I must change."  Nelson Mandela similarly said, "One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself I could not change others."

Aiken and Keller make a second critical point about so-called "opinion leaders" and "change agents".  Unfortunately, these individuals don't have as much influence on changing behavior as previously thought.  For example, the writer Malcolm Gladwell writes about "the law of the few" in his 2000 book, The Tipping Point.  Basically, "the law of the few" states that certain types of people ("opinion leaders" and "change agents") are especially effective at spreading a new idea or concept (the analogy in infectious disease would be a "super-spreader").  

As an example of his "law of the few" and how these relate to the broader concept of "tipping points", Gladwell discussed what happened with the shoe brand, Hush Puppies in the late 1990's.  The shoe brand was dying off until a few New York hipsters starting wearing the shoe brand.  Shortly thereafter, the brand took off and increased sales by 5,000 percent within 2 years (to use Gladwell's terminology, they "tipped").  While that sounds great, correlation is not the same as causation.  The network-theory scientist Duncan Watts has conducted a number of studies that suggest that "influence leaders" are no more likely to start a social fad than the rank and file.  The "diffusion of innovation" depends more on how receptive "society" (or in our case, the organization) is to the new idea.  Watts argues, "If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one–and if it isn’t, then almost no one can." 

The implication for us is that when preparing to embark on an organization-wide change initiative, we should not overestimate the importance of these change agents.  Rather, we should appropriately invest time and energy in preparing the organization to be more receptive to the change!  Again, change leaders and opinion leaders are important, but they are not the only component necessary to a successful change initiative.

We are almost done!  I will continue this theme on change management for at least my next two posts.  Next time, we will talk about how to develop "reinforcing mechanisms" to increase the likelihood of successful change.