Leading Exponential Change

by Erich R Bühler

  Research performed by Gallup and others has confirmed that there’s a clear relationship between emotions and employee commitment in a project, but also between their levels of cooperation and resistance. Therefore, you need to include the structures to support the role of emotions in your change strategy, and for these to be clearly associated with goals and objectives.

  Applying Neuroscience to Change

  There wasn’t much talk of digital companies twenty years ago. There were no specialized roles in Agile transformations, nor dozens of lectures on the subject. During 1999, I spent many long hours in front of a computer writing the first book on Microsoft Visual Basic .NET in Spanish. Because of this, I thought it would be a good idea to learn something new that would also get me moving. And thus, for several mornings that summer, I took windsurfing lessons.

  This new activity allowed me to take on a new challenge and occupy my mind with something unrelated to software development. Every day, before heading out, we’d meet with the coach on the beach and review the necessary protocol and how to respond in case of emergency. Luckily, Río de la Plata doesn’t present particularly strong marine currents, making it perfect for novices like me.

  On my second day, I could already mount the sail and tie different knots to adjust the board. On the third day, we got into the water and completed our first practice session. The instructor taught me how to raise myself onto the board and to stay there for a few seconds. For a beginner like me, it was tough. The waves rocked the board and made it difficult to balance. But within a few days, everything became simpler. Windsurfing felt like a reward for my efforts.

  I was struck by how mentally fatigued I felt at the end of each session. When undertaking a new activity, the part of the brain just behind your forehead, the prefrontal cortex, has to make a considerable effort to understand and learn what you are doing. This same prefrontal cortex is also the most advanced region of your brain, processing ideas and allowing you to draw your most elaborate conclusions.

  FIGURE 4.3: The human brain

  Regardless of whether it is something as intangible as a new process in your company, a computer language, a programming technique, or a physical activity, the prefrontal cortex consumes a huge amount of oxygen when faced with the challenge.

  This is why you felt so tired those first days at your new job or when modifying your routine. So it’s important to understand that people will feel more tired and their motivation may decrease because of fatigue during a period of change.

  Soon, my windsurfing progress was smooth sailing. I found it easy to stand on the board and even talk with my instructor while doing maneuvers. I practiced the same movement over and over again, which strengthened my neural connections. These new connections began to easily recall how to pair up with others and achieve the expected result. At this point, your brain’s hardware, the basal ganglia, is activated to store the experience, just like a hard drive.

  Located in the central part of your brain, the basal ganglia consume little energy. Thus, when new tasks turn automatic, you can carry them out almost without thinking.

  My biggest challenge started when I had to learn to stand on the board, keep my balance, and move the sail in the right direction. I had recurring and irrational thoughts that told me I wouldn’t ever be able to achieve it. It does seem there’s always a critic around when you’re trying to do something new and different.

  Something similar happens with people’s feelings at the beginning of a company’s change initiative. Our brains seem to oppose the change and generate resistance to new habits—and then there’s the fear of failure.

  Understanding the Initial Resistance

  When you face a challenge, a big change, or a new task, your prefrontal cortex uses high amounts of oxygen. When this happens, the amygdalae are activated almost automatically.

  The cerebral amygdalae are two separate structures (the left and right amygdala, each the size of an almond). They are crucial in the detection of threats and are commonly referred to as the “smoke detectors” of the body.

  The amygdalae secrete chemicals into your brain when you are in protective or intimidated mode, and this causes you to react and protect yourself from perceived threats. As a response to severe threats, the amygdalae can also cause visible physical reactions in preparation for an abrupt muscular response (fight or flight). Your heart starts to beat and pump faster, your face changes color, and your breathing speeds up.

  These brain structures are crucial for our survival in environments where information comes at us from several directions at the same time and where situations change rapidly. But the amygdalae can also take control of the brain and insert negative thoughts and emotions, trying to sabotage your plan and bring you back to your comfort zone. This happens to almost everyone affected by a change plan that widely modifies how we work or our role in the company.

  “As a leader, you can’t let emotions such as stress, fear, or anger control your behavior. Though it takes time to perfect, there are ways to control negative emotions and guide your responses.”

  Will Yakowicz, Journalist

  According to a study conducted by an international team of scientists led by Dr. Antonio Gil-Nagel (Madrid, 2016), the amygdalae require less than 100 milliseconds to activate, but it takes longer (some investigations claim 250 milliseconds) for thoughts to become conscious.

  Because of this, the information you have when you reflect on an idea has already been filtered by the amygdalae—and the bascule has already tipped.

  In workplaces that require the amygdalae to remain on constant alert, people tend to focus more on strict processes and routines and less on improvements or innovation. This creates a temporary disconnect of your thinking brain (the prefrontal cortex)—the region that helps you reason, learn, and solve problems with creativity.

  Imagine you’re in an important meeting and something increases your level of stress. All of a sudden—WHAM! Your amygdalae are aggressively activated! Your perception of reality changes, learning is interrupted, and your reasoning skills go back to archaic times.

  Either individually or as a team, write down three things that have worked well for you during the day and for which you are grateful. Research shows that this practice is one of the best ways to increase optimism and happiness, because making what’s positive in our lives visible helps decrease the activation of the amygdalae.

  Back at the office, the amygdalae are also activated when people or teams are overloaded with goals, tasks, and impossible deadlines. In these cases, people become paralyzed and the likelihood of reaching goals is reduced. The ideal solution is simple—empower employees to choose their tasks according to their understanding of what they can handle. You can use Kanban techniques to balance the workload and create a Backlog to ensure that everyone self-organizes around their work.

  Activity within the amygdalae decreases when short work cycles are used (days or weeks), because uncertainty is decreased. The Scrum framework works remarkably well for this, provided that no unfinished activities are dragged from one work cycle to the next.

  During a company change or transformation, look for situations where the amygdalae might be taking control or influencing decisions. If you see this happening, teach and remind people to use their thinking brain instead of falling victim to their emotions. You can initially help people focus on their breathing and take breaks to pay attention to their thoughts. In similar situations, I generally ask the following questions to help people regain control:

  Do you have any evidence to support the validity of these negative thoughts?

  What evidence makes these thoughts or concerns relevant?

  Is there anything that could disprove these negative thoughts or concerns?

  If stress occurs during a meeting, take a break. Upon returning, ask attendees the above questions. Answering these questions will help them focus on the facts (
instead of emotionally charged thoughts) and will gradually activate everyone’s prefrontal cortex, our thinking brain. The more positive evidence you can bring to light when answering the questions, the easier it will be to combat the negative thoughts triggered by the amygdalae.

  The reframing techniques explained in Chapter 5 are also excellent alternatives for increasing tolerance for new or different situations.

  The Effect of Emotions on Memory

  Memories are not static information stored and retrieved by the brain. They are thoughts that are re-created and highly influenced by how you think. Memories are recalled according to how a person reasons, and our interpretations of the past vary as our reasoning changes or evolves.

  Companies where teams have acquired new ways of thinking often change their interpretation of past events. But memories are also affected by a person’s emotional state. Individuals in a positive state of mind tend to regard past experiences more positively, and these kinds of emotions are stored in the basal ganglia.

  If past events have a strong negative emotional charge (heated discussions, conflict, etc.), these memories will be stored by the amygdalae and kept in very low-definition. This means that any present stress scenario, with minimum resemblance to a stored negatively charged situation, will automatically result in a similar reaction, be it physical or mental.

  Here’s a good story for you. I was walking through the English countryside with a couple of friends, when one of them went into a panic as we were making our way down a narrow path by the side of a lake. I noticed how his heart rate shot up and that he was on high alert. It only lasted a couple seconds, and he quickly returned to normal.

  His amygdalae had activated, confusing a branch with a snake, and it had caused him to react the same way he did when he had come “face-to-fangs” with a cobra in Africa!

  FIGURE 4.4: The amygdalae and the emotional hijacking of decisions

  Have you ever tried to give feedback to someone in front of their team, only to have them respond aggressively? This may have happened because the person’s low-definition memory caused them to impulsively feel as though they were being criticized and humiliated in public—like a dreadful flashback to when managers did this instead of offering positive, constructive feedback.

  Imagine you’re leading the implementation of a new framework, but weeks into the implementation you discover that traction has been lost. The amygdalae of your team members might be activating because of memories from when a new method only served to exert more pressure or control over employees. Your team could be confusing the framework you’re trying to implement with the feeling that was instinctively generated by their amygdalae.

  To overcome situations like this, positive experiences must be created, and any negative thoughts must be spoken about explicitly, with total honesty and openness. Speaking up will help employees consciously understand the new reality and, as a group, establish strategies to detect moments when that often-misleading smoke detector is activated.

  Many companies use the Scrum framework with its retrospective meeting. These meetings are crucial, as they make it possible for individuals to develop conscious ways to establish group tactics to deal with negative experiences from the past. But I’ve seen organizations where a process improvement meeting is called retrospective, and they are not the same. Process improvement focuses on the future versus examining the past, and it has less impact on the way people reason or on how they deal with high stress situations that activate the amygdalae.

  For a retrospective meeting to be effective, participants must not only focus on the improvement of processes but also actively challenge existing premises and how people interact. This includes thinking about the following:

  The emotional content of what has taken place during recent weeks.

  All human interactions: within the team, with other individuals, with other groups, or with the client.

  How processes or tools can be improved and how to help people feel more secure.

  Premises for current problems and how to question them.

  Areas that, due to market exponentiality or company growth, may make the team feel insecure.

  At the end of a retrospective meeting, the team should have one or two action points, as well as feedback for the entire company. These fundamental areas for improvement can be measured and monitored to track progress.

  Retrospective meetings are a necessary habit for adapting to exponentially changing market conditions. Without them, any improvement will occur in isolation and make it difficult for the entire company to adapt and grow.

  Symbolic Threats

  Anxiety can be produced by symbolic threats such as meetings between departments or with leadership, public speaking, incorporating new habits or frameworks, changes in the organization, or even working with people you don’t know well. The amygdalae aren’t activated only by low-definition memories or physical danger, but also by these types of perceived threats.

  Humans are particularly sensitive to alterations in role or reputation. The possibility of change in rank is one of the most aggressive threats an individual can be confronted with, and this is where the activation of the amygdalae can be especially disproportionate.

  Unfavorable status situations occur when people feel, implicitly or explicitly, that their position within the organization will be lost or diminished, when they think that others will have greater opportunities or privileges than them, or when they believe that others may have more access to information or key individuals.

  Situations like this will cause a rapid increase in the levels of cortisol, the hormone that plays an important role in helping the body respond to stress. The result is an abrupt obstruction of the thinking brain (prefrontal cortex), encumbering our ability to make rational decisions.

  When the Agile mindset or Scrum framework are in place, hierarchies in the organization are often flattened. This is when teams begin to self-organize around their goals and tasks, causing middle management to play a different role.

  Generally, managers transition from a more-controlling role to being leaders at the service of their groups (servant-leaders). The shift causes an unconscious slip in their perception of rank within the organization. As explained before, this can lead to the aggressive activation of the amygdalae. The result is often an increase in resistance and less flexibility toward change.

  To avoid this, your plan should include formal and informal arrangements that help people understand that their rank in the company will not be reduced. This should be supported by action and communication plans accordingly.

  As this is a sensitive issue, it’s necessary to reiterate the message more than once and in different ways to keep the brain’s defense mechanisms at bay.

  For any planned change, you should carefully consider any modifications in the position or status of employees. It’s especially difficult to address these issues when embarking on a major transformation in a large organization, as numerous people are involved. But the initial public information must be, at the very least, sensitive as to how the change could affect employees.

  It’s a good idea to involve those at risk of feeling a loss of status with their new role. Participating in the impact assessment and helping to design the strategies will help them maintain their sense of role security.

  The Effects of Unsolicited Advice in the Company

  We all know that person who loves giving advice—especially unsolicited, chiming in with “Why don’t you . . . ?” This is a common and well-intentioned practice in many companies, and it usually seems like an innocent enough question or statement.

  In more-traditional organizations, suggestions are usually handled through formal channels, while in more-modern companies, they are handled informally and publicly.

  We all know that opinions come at us from all directions and in all shapes and sizes. We sit with clients to
create products of excellence and allow them to advise us on how to do it better. We encourage teams to tell us how to perfect their interactions, and we meet to analyze how we could have acted more effectively in the previous work cycle.

  Giving an unsolicited opinion or piece of advice is likely to be interpreted by the recipient’s unconscious brain as though it’s being dictated to them by someone of a higher rank, or by someone with more knowledge in the matter.

  Giving advice can feel great, but neuroscience tells us that unsolicited advice is considered the second greatest threat to the amygdalae. I’m not telling you to refrain from giving advice, but you should consider the objective of the advice and the best way of sharing it. On many occasions it’s preferable to use guiding questions that lead the recipient toward the conclusion.

  Feedback should have clear rules. One way to achieve this is through Bob Marshall’s perfection game, a retrospective exercise that helps activate the correct areas of the brain and enhance the positive acceptance of feedback. The perfection game has three prompts that must be answered:

  Rate the product / service / interaction with me / change plan / etc. on a scale of 1-10

  What I liked about is . . .

  If it wasn’t perfect for me, what would make it a perfect 10 is . . . (list what needs to change)

  Divide participants into pairs and have them stand or sit face-to-face. For the first prompt, each pair will rate different situations, interactions, or services received from their partner on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 = not so good and 10 = excellent). If there’s nothing they think could be improved, they would indicate a 10. If they feel the result could be doubled, then a 5 would be indicated.