{"id":3911,"date":"2024-09-23T12:14:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T10:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/why-change-usually-fails\/"},"modified":"2024-09-23T12:14:02","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T10:14:02","slug":"why-change-usually-fails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/why-change-usually-fails\/","title":{"rendered":"Why change (usually) fails"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Spend 5 minutes on Instagram and you would believe that just by being focused, mindfully Zen, practising positive thinking and eating healthy you can achieve anything.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If it is that easy, then why do we see:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">23% of people give up on their New Year\u2019s Resolutions in the first week, more than 33% before the end of January and 81% give up within two years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only 20% of people who lose weight manage to stay that way for at least a year, and only 5% of people haven\u2019t relapsed after 5 years.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In business, McKinsey research shows that only 26% percent of change initiatives are successful at delivering and sustaining benefits over time.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deep down we know a darker, more inconvenient truth: real change, even the kind that seems to succeed at first, usually fails.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is kinda depressing, especially if you want to lead your organisation into a new phase of growth. Because of course growth is all about change, and you cannot grow without changing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I am active in the field of change as a change manager, trainer and coach, and I believe that our time on earth is limited and therefore too precious to waste on changes that are doomed to fail. So let\u2019s shift the odds a bit more in our favour, and look at what is going on here\u2026 why do we aspire to change, but fail at it so easily?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>How change looks to the human brain<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the perspective of the western world, many of our basic human needs are covered.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The struggle for existence and survival is over for most of us, we are doing well.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have a roof over our head, a fridge full of food and wonderful health care (that we like to complain about).\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We are living in the age of instant gratification, one could say that we have arrived, we are there!\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And at the same time there is this almost endless list of trends to improve your life and happiness. In come the gurus, commercials and glossy magazines. This is a sort of change paradox.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If we have a quick look at evolution and the human brain we see that it makes perfect sense. We can divide the human brain in roughly three layers. (Reality is <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">much<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> more complex and I wouldn&#8217;t advise brain surgery based on the following schematic, but for our purpose here it will do just fine.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4213 size-full alignnone\" src=\"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/reptillian-brain-1-e1680013921346.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"377\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let&#8217;s start with the first and oldest layer of our brain, the brainstem, nicknamed the \u201creptilian\u201d brain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This part controls the basic functions we need to stay alive: breathing, temperature, heartbeat, digestion and our fight or flight response.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is also the part of the brain where our habitual behaviour ends up; the things we do without having to think about it, like riding a bike, putting on your socks, having a smoke \u2013 even crossing your arms.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whether you like it or not, automatic behaviour needs very little to become activated. Even if the effect is negative or damaging, it keeps on repeating.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second layer is called the limbic system, or \u201cmammalian\u201d brain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This part of the brain is the domain of emotions; anger, happiness, fear and sadness.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Its main driver is punishment and reward. If it feels good the limbic brain wants more of it and when it doesn&#8217;t feel nice the limbic brain wants to stop it.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The limbic brain doesn&#8217;t care if something is healthy or not. Sugar is unhealthy, but tastes good so you want more of it. Hitting your head hurts so you try to avoid it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These two brain layers work at an unconscious level, without language or words, so they can&#8217;t \u2018think\u2019. Reptilians and lower mammals don&#8217;t think about what they are doing in a conscious way. A chameleon doesn&#8217;t have sex because it wants to have a baby chameleon, it does it out of instinct. Mammals do it out of instinct and because it feels good. So animals do not have the urge to survive, they have urges and therefore they survive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The last and the newest part of our brain is called the neocortex or \u201chuman\u201d brain. This part of our brain contains language and the ability to think.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The behaviour here is always in service of your own mindset. If your mindset is pleasure you eat as much tasty stuff as possible, have a nice drink with it and don&#8217;t worry about the calories. If your framework is slim and healthy, you mind the calories, drink enough water and exercise regularly.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You could see the neocortex as a luxury layer that only developed in human evolution when the basic need for survival and continuity of the species were taken care of.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This layer can postpone gratification, think of the path towards it and can give words to it.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This layer has a concept of time, past and future and is able to create stories and social constructs like religion, philosophy, politics, finance, or the concept of \u2018growing your business\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It has concepts of good and bad and the idea that things can be improved. So this is actually the place where our conscious ideas for change originate.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Why is this a problem?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On a day to day basis the different parts of the brain work together in harmony to get you through the day without too much trouble. There are some quirks though that are good to know, especially when it comes to change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">1: Large parts of your life are executed on auto-pilot. From an evolutionary perspective brain efficiency is very important. Because the neocortex is slow and can only execute one task at a time properly, a lot of daily stuff is being processed by the lower, unconscious, levels of the brain. The lower systems are much faster, have created routines and make use of pattern recognition to run a large part of your daily activities. Only when something breaks the pattern and cannot be handled on auto-pilot will the conscious brain kick in. And that&#8217;s a good thing. Think back to this morning when you were getting dressed. You probably don&#8217;t remember what sock you put on first, or which leg you put in your pants first. That is because your subconscious systems took care of that. Imagine how tiring it would be if you had to actively run all those parts of your daily routine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2: Related to that, the limbic system is extremely fast, it processes information 200 times faster than the cognitive part of our brain. Sometimes it has already made a decision, often based on emotional factors or the basic feel good filter, without you even being aware of it. Your cognitive brain then makes up the rational story around it afterwards. Even creating filters or cognitive biases that allow information through that support your decision and blocking information that opposes it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">3: The last quirk to highlight here, because it has a big impact on change, is stress. From an evolutionary perspective stress is the body\u2019s reaction to a possible life-threatening situation. Your nervous system is wired to automatically revert to more efficient processing methods to keep the organism safe. In other words, the brain will downshift from neocortex involvement to rely more heavily on the survival and emotional processing part of the brainstem and limbic system. Even though most stressful situations nowadays have nothing to do with life or death situations, we regress to older, less effective, software nonetheless.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Organisations are just groups of people<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So by now you are probably wondering \u2013 this is all great, but how does it help me lead my organisation through growth and change?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Organisational change is just lots of individual change put together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ed Catmull in his book \u2018Creativity Inc\u2019 has an important insight; that we respond to big problems and small problems very differently despite the fact that they share many similar characteristics. The same can be said for people vs organisational change; we have placed these two very similar phenomena into different buckets, but they are in fact the same thing. Organisational change happens one person at a time, and understanding how to navigate this can improve our chances of making successful change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For this I would like to share the formula for durable change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>d\u0394 = F(iD x D x iA)<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Durable change (or delta d\u0394) is the function (F) of internal drive, multiplied by discipline, multiplied by internal attribution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(iD) Internal drive is suffering from the current situation and seeing a solution.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(D) Discipline is the ability to resist old habits and social pressure.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(iA) Internal attribution is holding yourself accountable for success and failure and not shifting the blame out to others.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can only achieve durable change if you score on all three elements of this!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Huh?!<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s ok\u2026let me give you a personal example. At the beginning of the pandemic lockdown I had this thought pop-up \u201cI really should work out more\u201d and that it might be a good idea to actively work on my condition. Especially since I was spending large parts of my day sitting at the kitchen table or on the couch. Strangely enough at the same time my Facebook and Instagram feed started overflowing with ads for home workout equipment and instructional videos.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So when I put the \u201cI should really work out more\u201d as the durable change I wanted to achieve in the formula, this is what I found:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Internal drive:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> it is mainly a neocortex thought, you can recognize it because it starts with \u201cI really should\u201d. I did not have any actual problem or pain and at the same time there was no real pleasure to be found. Let\u2019s say I scored a 3 out of 10.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Discipline:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Sitting on the couch is nice and relaxed there bingeing Netflix series with my partner (social pressure). My past experience with working out doesn\u2019t show a great track record either. So let\u2019s put a 2 out of 10 here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Internal attribution:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Well since the gym was closed during lock down and the bootcamp club stopped doing sessions, there wasn\u2019t much I could do\u2026 right? No one else was giving me the opportunity &#8211; Another low score, maybe a 2.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that is a pretty terrible result if you are looking for durable change. The three layers of my brain are not aligned and are not helping out here, my neocortex wants something that is not supported by my limbic or brainstem at all. So what to do, give up or try to engineer and fix some of the flaws in my formula\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So here is what I did:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On internal drive:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I called on a friend with a lot of workout discipline. Having the workouts as a fun moment of catching up, but also not wanting to let the other person down by not showing up, creating some pleasure and pain for the mammalian brain.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I used a smart watch to help set some realistic targets. Triggering dopamine release whenever I hit a target. I could also have posted a workout picture to social media and got little dopamine hits with each \u2018like\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On discipline:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Helped out my discipline by having a fixed schedule that is tied by an agreement to another person.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After a while the endorphin that is being released creates a new addiction supporting the creation of a new pattern and routine.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On internal attribution:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take a deep look in the mirror and acknowledge there was still a lot I could do to create a workout routine that did not depend on external factors. <\/span>\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By doing this I actually aligned the different layers of my brain, scoring higher on the formula for durable change. I can tell, because I\u2019m sticking with it \u2013 it got me over the one week hump, the one month hump, and because of that I made it over the two year mark.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Applying this to your organisation<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The same formula can be applied to business change as well. Durable business change is more likely if the team;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">feels genuine pain, or desires the pleasure they could gain<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">can resist the temptation to fall back into old ways, and<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">understands that the change is their responsibility, both individually and collectively.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So to summarise, here are 4 elements for succeeding in durable change:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Engineer for success: use the change formula and the knowledge of the brain to see how you, your team, and your organisation score. Fix the weak parts of your formula!<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stack for success: Align the different layers of your brain, and your team\u2019s brains, to increase the chances of success.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Create new habits in small steps: set mini targets you can collectively reach to build a new habit and release dopamine.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Be brutally honest: why fool yourself? Save yourself the trouble and energy of embarking on hopeless change endeavours. Pick the ones where you can bend the odds in your favour.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I wish you all the best on your future change endeavours and let me know how you are doing!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Bonus tip<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remember that you as a leader will have been considering and familiarising yourself with change long before your team has. As you lead them through the change, remember that you will be looking at a change process that you have already been through mentally, but your team\u2019s first experience will be actively living it. Meet them where they are, connect, and start out on your joint change journey together.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>A guest blog by Arjen Hoven<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-4226\" src=\"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/arjan-150x150.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spend 5 minutes on Instagram and you would believe that just by being focused, mindfully Zen, practising positive thinking and eating healthy you can achieve anything.\u00a0 If it is that easy, then why do we see: 23% of people give up on their New Year\u2019s Resolutions in the first week, more than 33% before the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3914,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions\/3914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyseminds.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}