Leading Exponential Change

by Erich R Bühler

  Although I’m not particularly sociable in the mornings, I decided to interject—before someone concluded that Walt Disney had produced the moon landing, which would only lead to someone saying that the filmmaker was being held in deep freeze at some top-secret base in the US near Roswell . . .

  “We must be careful not to believe things simply because we want them to be true. No one can fool you as easily as you can fool yourself!”

  Richard Feynman, Physicist

  I offered what I felt to be an irrefutable piece of information: On the moon, there’s a laser reflector (Laser Ranging Retroreflector or LRR) installed by Apollo 11 during its mission. Its main objective is to reflect back a laser fired from Earth to measure the distance between the two. I added that the reflector has been in operation for over four decades.

  After hearing me out, though, they were still far from convinced, and they attempted to invalidate my claim with dozens of new arguments. They continued with their rhetoric, adding that no one could have filmed Armstrong because the radiation would have melted the cameras, and that the delay in communications was less than it should have been considering the technology at the time. How was it possible that logic did not prevail and that these individuals did not change their minds after hearing me? I’d forgotten how several surveys sustained that between 6 percent and 20 percent of Americans, 25 percent of Britons, and 28 percent of Russians believe that humans have never landed on the moon.

  Then I remembered something I’ve seen play out in companies for years: Rational arguments are not very effective at altering people’s beliefs or behaviors. Our rational brain is equipped with evolutionary neurological mechanisms that aren’t particularly advanced, and information that differs from our personal beliefs is perceived as a threat.

  For the most part, forms of reasoning learned during early childhood guide our opinions for the rest of our lives. When we hear contradictory information that threatens our dogmas, the mind, instead of accepting it, focuses on finding fault or inconsistency. The mind creates arguments against the information instead of establishing brain connections that allow new forms of reasoning to develop.

  This is what we call confirmation bias, which refers to the way in which our brain draws conclusions. Confirmation bias was initially demonstrated in the 1960s by Peter C. Wason, a cognitive psychologist at University College London.

  Confirmation bias is the process of putting together a selective collection of evidence to affirm a position. Many employees or groups tend to favor information that confirms their preconceived ideas or hypotheses, regardless of their accuracy.

  We see it all the time in companies: a team that doesn’t talk to the client but makes decisions about what the client might like or dislike about the product, or a Product Owner who creates several user profiles and makes decisions without face-to-face feedback from clients (or only collects it every several months).

  We also observe confirmation bias in discussions: someone who tries to lead others by pushing the idea that their process, framework, or anything else is better (for example, Agile vs. Waterfall, SAFe vs. LeSS, etc.). Going back to the airplane story, you might be intrigued to know why conspiracy theories arise—an explanation, by the way, that could help you better understand how to lead a company.

  As individuals, we have a psychological need to create clear structures in our minds when observing the world around us. At the same time, we try to reconfirm our existing beliefs in everything we see. By doing this, we attempt to predict patterns and behaviors in others, helping us decide how to act in the short and medium term. But this mental process can be a trap if we are not aware of it.

  This confirmation bias helps people feel more secure and minimizes the activation of the amygdala, the region of your brain responsible for detecting threats. This can cause problems, as it doesn’t allow you to clearly and objectively judge the information before you.

  Remember that confirmation bias is the human tendency to seek, favor, and use information that confirms a preexisting opinion.

  Overcoming Confirmation Bias

  Confirmation bias is less than advantageous for companies that must make frequent decisions because of constant changes in their markets. A good way of overcoming this bias is to use a different kind of question.

  Case in point: The management team of a company was considering the launch of a new top product to maintain its privileged position. They convinced the rest of the group to conduct market research to explore its viability. Within days, surveys, focus groups, and competitive analyses were all set in motion.

  The decision was clearly emotional, and those responsible didn’t realize that their views and actions were being strongly influenced by their feelings and would only result in reconfirming their initial, and very possibly misguided, beliefs. The market research team began asking questions that the managers themselves had recommended, questions that were, of course, biased. As a consequence, the results were exactly as expected and reconfirmed the managers’ initial hypothesis.

  So how can you, and should you, minimize confirmation bias in your company?

  How you ask questions and measure results are part of the answer. To discover preferences, instead of asking, “Do you think is a good idea for the product? Would you be interested in it?” you can ask consumers to classify the characteristics of their ideal service or product.

  Another option would be for someone on the team to play devil’s advocate while another takes on points of view that the group doesn’t commonly take. For this, you need to know what the more uncommon and common perspectives are in the situation.

  Confirmation bias can be present in any part of the organization. For example, during a personnel-selection process, someone from HR might sit down with a candidate and ask them to sell their skills to the company. If the candidate fits the role, they may be asked questions that lead to expected answers, such as, “How do you perform under stress, and can you give me an example?”

  Logically, the person is expected to provide an appropriate answer, because the work surely has high levels of stress.

  To reduce confirmation bias in cases such as this, it’s necessary to change how questions are framed. One of my favorite techniques is to use the opposite scenario: Why do you think you are not the person for this job? What should this product fail to do when it hits the market? What do you dislike about our service?

  Asking more-open questions allows the brain to reason differently. Questions that begin with How are another alternative: How do you think you can help our company?

  Confirmation bias is extremely difficult to overcome, both in your personal and professional lives. People don’t like to be wrong. Our minds will always look for evidence to show that the chosen path is the right one and that anyone who disagrees is moderately wrong.

  Applying neuroscience of change helps us understand processes and influence mental patterns to allow leaders, change agents, and consultants to make better decisions during a transformation.

  Change and Learning in Traditional Companies

  Many companies believe that providing more information will help people do their jobs better and make better decisions, but this is only partially true. We are not designed to acquire knowledge that could alter our reasoning or related behaviors, and it’s a challenge to make a group of individuals acquire new habits.

  We’re prepared for a world of linear and progressive evolution, where one fact leads to another and the discovery of something is nothing more than the accumulation of previous events. We’ve lived this way for many generations, and that’s what we’ve been taught since we were very young. We all carry childhood “baggage” (what we learned as children), and this permeates our reasoning, our beliefs, and our behaviors as adults.

  Except during extreme situations, such as natural disasters or other life-altering events that abruptly change our habits, you’ll abide by rule
s learned during childhood when making sense of your day-to-day decisions.

  Your brain considers situations that do not fit with your way of thinking as a threat. You don’t perceive the resistance directly because it takes place in your subconscious, but it reflects in your conscious self in the form of arguments that will seem coherent and well founded.

  You’ll probably agree that it’s difficult to identify the origin of most resistance and friction when you try to lead a change. Instead, we tend to simplify the problem and solve it as if it were a complicated situation, although, in reality, it’s complex.

  Traditional change management tactics from the eighties more closely resemble obedience training than psychology and neuroscience; that is, leaders promise bonuses and promotions to those who agree to the change (the carrot) and punish those who fail to do their job or obtain poor results (the stick).

  The results of several investigations carried out by McKinsey & Company showed that around 70 percent of change initiatives fail. Why? How can you make yours more successful? The connection between a change (or decision) in the company and how brain processes produce healthy habits is rarely evaluated, but this is key to understanding the source of institutional resistance and dysfunctions you are likely to encounter when working with teams. The neuroscience of change offers a window of opportunity. You can help people become more aware of their shortcomings, make better decisions, and be more open to learning, evolving, and acquiring healthier habits that match Agile and modern company needs.

  The Key to Success

  Regardless of the country, company size, or culture, there’s always a factor that will condition the success of your next change initiative. Can you imagine what it is?

  Change initiatives require certain ingredients so that the desired behaviors become exponential (that is, for people to offer low resistance to change and be open to new ideas, with positive and proactive attitudes toward learning). They should also be willing to modify how they think when they come across information that contradicts their beliefs or reasoning.

  FIGURE 4.1: Ways to make a change and corresponding sustainability

  Allow me to clarify the difference between exponential and contagious. In a company where change is contagious, nearby departments (uninvolved in the change) observe the change and adopt or copy some of their ideas or processes. If they find something interesting or useful, they will add it to their own toolbox as a new skill. But keep in mind that contagious mechanisms become very complex if you try using them to expand a practice, technique, or framework throughout the rest of the company.

  In a business transformation where change is exponential, the result is different. Here, members of departments that surround those who are changing will feel that their own ways are outdated. They will fervently want to copy, understand, take over, and evolve the new processes. They feel it’s no longer possible to maintain the status quo, that their world has changed, and that a door has opened leading to a better individual and group life within the organization.

  When transformation becomes exponential, people are motivated, and it is they who push the new small habits (micro-habits) and want to share their experiences. They are thirsty to learn more and make the change. They also find that the practices or processes they use locally can be expanded to the rest of the company without restrictions, and this is true even if the company, or team, grows suddenly.

  A micro-habit is a small action that requires minimal effort or motivation to complete. The accumulation of micro-habits can have an important positive impact. In general, a micro-habit takes no more than a second to commence and sixty seconds to complete. It’s repeated over and over during the course of a day or week. It is a fundamental “technique” to make a change plan become exponential.

  Exponential change also makes it easier to find solutions that enable teams to convert limited resources or linear forms of difficult-to-expand work into new ways that are easily scalable. This will lead people to feel comfortable with the constant changes.

  I have seen change initiatives where leaders have tried to expand a framework to the rest of the company using linear thinking. The consequence was that the processes or frameworks could not be adapted as the number of teams that used them increased. So it’s necessary that you understand how the brain functions, accepts change, and regulates or adds new habits and behaviors to confront situations in constant change.

  The Science Behind the Change

  In recent years, brain-analysis technologies such as electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have allowed us to track how the energy of a thought flows through the brain, in the same way that we trace blood flowing through our circulatory system. We can also see different areas illuminate according to the type of thought.

  This scientific base helps us understand how we react to change and supports the new style of leadership needed to get ahead in the era of exponential results. It also brings us closer to understanding how people react best to business transformations.

  Neuroplasticity is the “muscle” of the brain. It facilitates the improvement of what is done and thought by generating new neural connections. It takes place as the result of learning, new experiences, or reframing. According to Hebbian theory, neural connections can become stronger or weaker depending on how often the thought process is repeated.

  Understanding the neuroscience of change and how we process ideas and make decisions is vital in developing new ways of managing the company, making it simpler and much more flexible. You need to be able to identify techniques and teach people how to acquire habits that help establish new brain connections, reconnect existing behaviors differently, and develop knowledge in an environment that is perceived as safe and positive.

  This is what’s called neuroplasticity, defined as the art of increasing neural connections, thereby resulting in new habits and behaviors. Neuroplasticity helps people evolve and reason differently.

  Evidence indicates that employees who work in companies where tasks provide an appropriate level of challenge, and are performed collaboratively, benefit from improved brain neuroplasticity. Change agents, consultants, coaches, and leaders should focus on creating opportunities for people to increase neuroplasticity. As a result, employees will become more motivated to learn and actively seek to evolve the way they interact and reason.

  Your change plan (which includes its strategy, training, and implementation) must provide challenges, encourage taking risks, and even make people uncomfortable in a way that leads to success. Analyzing situations from several points of view helps create new neural connections. This is why collaborative decision-making also encourages neuroplasticity.

  Pilot projects are a good example, because they make it possible for employees to experience new emotions, ideas, processes, values, or principles in a controlled and safe space.

  The Power of Emotions in Decisions

  During a company transformation, employees often believe that a new plan presented by management puts their role in the company at risk. This thought process means that all the information evaluated by the person in the following weeks will be judged negatively—without them even realizing it!

  Your brain has emotions that are connected to the same channel through which decision-making information flows (the limbic system). In other words, your thoughts and actions are colored or biased by your emotions. This peculiar phenomenon makes some things you observe look better than they really are—or alternatively, utterly miserable.

  The ability to take a nearly instantaneous posture toward a situation has been an important element for evolutionary survival. We react first, and then we analyze. That first reaction automatically colors the situation and, without you realizing it, influences how you’ll process subsequent information. Sure, such a process can be useful if you’re at the entrance of a cave and a bear appears in front of you, but i
t’s not an advantage if you need to react calmly to an instance of stress in the company.

  Take this example: You’re in a meeting room and a manager comes in and explains a delicate situation. Before solutions become conscious in your mind, your brain will have already taken an initial position based on your emotions.

  This is also true in the design of products. A customer will prefer a functional feature of a product that generates a greater emotional charge over another that produces less emotion.

  FIGURE 4.2: Minimum Product Increment and emotions (Source: Aarron Walter)

  Logic only comes into play if emotion allows it, and you must take this into account when leading a change strategy. When an initiative has a clear purpose and people have fun from the beginning, that positive state will tilt the bascule favorably, and this will happen before they are even able to reflect on ideas.

  Involving employees in decisions is important, and they should be able to self-organize around their tasks and speak openly about their concerns, expectations, and challenges. As before, how you phrase your questions will influence everything else: What’s the personal challenge you see in this plan or initiative?

  This question allows you to talk about the difficulties within the company and helps connect emotions with the initiative and put minds in a receptive state.