An Individual Transformation to Achieve a Collective Transformation
By: Claudia Patricia Salas, Human Resources Consultant
As a human resources professional, I have been part of many organizational transformations in different countries and cultures. Reading Chapter 4 has helped me reflect on changes and micro-habits that I use every day. I believe the following:
There is no absolute reality; we live in worlds that can be interpreted differently.
We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are. We interpret reality according to how we think. Our judgment, beliefs, emotions, and biology influence what we see, hear, and feel.
Humans have three major dimensions: language (mind), body, and emotions, all of which interact fully.
Language plays a fundamental role in defining our behaviors: it creates realities.
Company leaders and change consultants must internalize and integrate these four points. New mental structures (reframing) are also essential for supporting a business transformation. Awareness of these paradigms has made me develop micro-habits that I apply daily as I listen to and observe people. For starters, I am wary of confirmation biases. I believe we see what we want to see, and we hear what we want to hear. These erroneous perceptions become attitudes and behaviors that can affect those around us.
A few years ago, I hired a professional for a technical position. He was a brilliant developer—but he always had something to complain about, and he expressed his criticisms aggressively. With time, I categorized him as confrontational and unconsciously started to treat him in kind: I was slow to reply to his calls and emails, my conversational manner became blunter, and, when he spoke to me, I came to expect a complaint. Gradually, my attitude bought out and worsened his most problematic side: my biases had caused real consequences.
You see, when we work with people, we risk falling prey to confirmation biases and prejudices.
When I started working in recruitment, I unconsciously showed prejudice while reading CVs and conducting my first interviews. After reviewing a CV, I would categorize it with descriptions such as “unstable” or “friendly.” If the candidate was considering other offers, I’d think, “She must be very good, which is why others are also contacting her.”
This kind of prejudice emerged instantaneously, lacking any rational argument or evidence.
To “fight” this, I developed a micro-habit that I have applied ever since. When I first pick up a resume, I look it over for no more than a couple seconds (stimulus). Instead of categorizing it and automatically rejecting or accepting it, I place it on hold (crucial moment). A few minutes later, I read it again, this time in detail. I perform this second reading with a more open mind. I go as far as saying to myself, “Be careful!” I repeat this process several times before finally contacting the candidate to hear his or her story.
Prejudice operates in our minds more than we’d like to admit. Uncontrollable thoughts are almost always activated when we receive a stimulus. The crucial moment to become aware of prejudice comes mere seconds after the stimulus, and this is when we can redirect our decisions.
When we work with others, discussions are something else to consider. The micro-habit I have developed for discussions is that when I hear an opinion with which I disagree, I immediately take a breath. After a pause, I state, “I think that . . .” I also add, “From your point of view . . .” This helps to avoid unnecessary arguments and conflicts, because it reminds us that there are different points of view—with the added benefit of increasing our neuroplasticity!
Over the years, I have become more empathetic and flexible with others. I have also changed the way I speak to myself. I have my own mental dialogue and have changed the words that I repeat to myself to transform my way of thinking. In addition to assuming new paradigms and concepts, I have also developed the micro-habit of speaking to myself more positively, even when facing the simplest challenges.
Changing your internal dialogue expands your possibilities and generates opportunities. To transform an organization, you must start by transforming yourself.
What You Have Learned
The relationship between logic and beliefs.
Confirmation bias.
The effect of emotions.
The initial resistance to change and how the brain responds.
What micro-habits are and how to use them.
Change approaches to use according to motivation levels.
Where in your company can you see confirmation bias, and what actions could you take to change those situations?
What technique can you use to get positive feedback?
What’s needed to identify a micro-habit?
Can you identify at least two micro-habits that could initiate new positive behaviors in your company?
“Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.”
Warren Bennis, Organizational Consultant
For several years, we have been using Lean and Agile mindsets, the Scrum framework, and visual management tools (task boards, Kanban, etc.) to empower the organization to become more flexible and offer better solutions for clients. Many also know the essential attitudes that are needed to motivate people when implementing a change initiative.
Daniel H. Pink, New York Times bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind, rightly said that for individuals to be motivated, they require three intrinsic attributes within their culture and daily tasks:
Autonomy - A desire to be self-directed.
Mastery - The urge to acquire better skills.
Purpose - The desire to do something that has meaning and is important.
This is a solid foundation for feeling happy and impassioned about work, but this alone will not make a change contagious.
I have seen extremely motivated teams lack the skills to create situations that make change contagious. For this to happen, one can’t only look inward—inside the team. One must also look outward—at interactions with other teams. This initially requires that teams belonging to the same value stream have shared goals and a shared understanding of the problem. Shared objectives help increase collaboration between teams, but they don’t necessarily encourage surrounding groups to understand and adopt new, healthier habits.
Value stream represents activities (processes, people, resources, etc.) a team uses to build solutions that provide a continuous flow of value to customers.
You need to plant a different seed, one that makes it possible to evolve how teams reason, resolve conflict, take responsibility for tasks, view different expectations, and embrace other attitudes for turning the organization into a remarkable place. This is what I call CREEP, a set of five areas that I usually focus on weeks before starting a change initiative.
FIGURE 5.1: Focus on CREEP before starting your business transformation
Focusing on these five areas ensures that the subsequent plan becomes contagious from the liftoff stage:
C Conflict Resolution
R Reframing Mindset
E Exponential Strategy
E Expectations and Alignment
P Psychological Ownership
These areas can be analyzed and acted on in any order, depending on the situation. They can also be incorporated into existing habits within the company. Even if an initiative has already taken off, you can review these areas to provide the company with greater adaptability and speed.
Conflict Resolution
No matter how you define your workplace culture, the dynamics of interpersonal relationships play a key role in how objectives will be met and in the success of the business transformation.
It’s practically inevitable that conflict in the compan
y increases during periods of change, particularly when change is exponential. New roles are created, technologies are added, and personal interactions and work changes, as do the metrics. All of this can lead to an increase in uncertainty and conflict.
It isn’t unusual to find company leaders stating that one of their biggest challenges is finding solutions to conflicts that occur every day as a result of unexpected situations. Many times, they unintentionally avoid crucial conversations because they feel they lack the skills to handle them, they don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, or they’re unsure whether they can use traditional ways to solve a problem in the “new” company.
I’ve seen organizations investing more time trying to find solutions to this type of situation than supporting innovation, creating greater business value for their clients, or looking for ways to modify areas that work in a linear fashion to make them exponential.
Organizations unable to manage conflict positively will find it hard to accelerate change. It’s therefore necessary to count on specific knowledge on how to build a solid foundation so that conflict can be used as a positive tool, helping you pave the way for continuous improvement.
In Chapter 1, I presented the Runde and Flanagan conflict resolution model so you could evaluate where your company stands in terms of conflict. Below I describe a behavior that can slam the brakes on your plan if you don’t know how to manage it correctly.
In 1968, Dr. Stephen B. Karpman developed the drama triangle (persecutor, victim, rescuer). Although this was over forty years ago, it’s as relevant and new to change agents and leaders today as it was back then.
The drama triangle consists of three roles that appear when a problem arises and creates utterly dysfunctional behavior.
FIGURE 5.2: Dr. Karpman’s drama triangle
Victim - The person or team that feels victimized, oppressed, helpless, hopeless, and ashamed, and seems unable to make decisions for itself: “They’ll definitely fire us!” or “We did our best but could achieve no more!” They aren’t real victims. They only feel and act as one.
Persecutor - The controlling person, who is critical, oppressive, angry, authoritarian, rigid, and superior. The person who blames others for what’s happened: “It’s all this person’s / team’s fault” or “No one does their job properly in this company!”
Rescuer - The person who rises to help the victim, putting out “fires.” This person acts with good intentions, often believing that their proposed solution or way of thinking is better. “I’ll help you solve this” or “I know the best solution. Let’s sit down and do it together so you can finish the job on time.”
Even with only two individuals, this kind of relationship can exist. A single individual can also take on different roles, depending on the situation.
In my first years as an Agile consultant in England, I was hired by a digital recruitment company that wanted to adopt the Scrum framework. One of the teams (the victim) systematically accepted more work than they could handle. They regularly succumbed to pressure and wanted to prove that they could do better than before.
During the two-week work cycle, the Product Owner (the persecutor) kept adding small requirements, but at the end of the cycle he would publicly criticize the developers (the victims) for not finishing what they’d committed to. This resulted in a certain person from outside the group always offering to help (the rescuer).
This person would sit with the developers for long hours and, because he’d been their boss some years back, he’d make constant comments about the low quality of the code or what should have been done differently—thereby also becoming a persecutor.
This situation repeated itself over and over, generating a lose-lose relationship for all. Over time, I could see that the participants began to polarize and become increasingly tense, and this resulted in resentment and a loss of motivation.
I have seen organizations inadvertently expand the drama triangle to the rest of the company. This dysfunctionality then becomes further entrenched in the culture, making it harder to eliminate.
The drama triangle is a toxic pattern whereby everyone tries to manipulate each other in different ways. As you can see, this situation impedes change from becoming contagious and doesn’t allow the company to adapt as intended.
Leading Conflict Situations
It’s crucial that you or the other leaders know how to effectively break this type of dynamic. This implies taking responsibility for the situation.
The first step is to understand how the damaging relationship operates and to realize that, in day-to-day situations, you could end up becoming part of the triangle. Asking yourself the following three questions can guide you:
What orientation do I adopt within the dynamic?
What action can I take to help us exit the triangle?
What skills, resources or, training do we need to better cope with these situations?
Let me give you an example. After a coaching session, the employees of a company agreed to always have three cards in their pocket (victim, persecutor, rescuer). They would pull out the most appropriate card whenever their conversation fell into the drama triangle. This helped them become more aware of the dynamics and enabled them to adopt healthier habits.
At a different company, I organized an activity in which participants acted out a recent situation. I then repeated the same situation, with participants exchanging roles. This allowed them to observe what was happening from a different angle.
We then used The Empowerment Dynamic (TED) to establish a new form of communication among the participants. TED employs a different perspective to “break” the dynamics of a drama triangle.
Created by David Emerald, TED focuses on balancing the way people relate to each other, learn, and take on responsibility. Three roles are fostered: Creator, Challenger, and Coach. The Creator takes advantage of his state of motivation to develop a product or service that people love. The Challenger focuses on providing learning and vision, and the Challenger also challenges the Creator with ideas that can become reality. The Coach understands how to ask powerful questions to ensure that the Creator understands the vision and that the Challenger does not enter into the trap of the drama triangle.
You can also employ a different approach by changing micro-habits.
At a company I helped, the software architects “rescued” Scrum team members on a weekly basis—whenever the team members faced difficult tasks. The architects would sit at the desks of the product developers and complete arduous tasks. This obviously offered a short-term solution, but it seriously deterred learning and the Scrum team’s sense of commitment.
To remedy this, I suggested a rule that forever changed the habits they used to relate to one another: The rule stated that only members of the development teams could touch their keyboards. Architects could sit with the developers and explain, but it was the programmers who had to do the work.
Other techniques for conflict resolution include creating explicit working agreements that result in healthier habits, adding principles, or establishing new and healthier micro-habits to the groups. I recommend that you evaluate the situation and ask your teams what they think would be the most effective solution to their problem.
Reframing
In recent years, we have used techniques such as brainstorming and design thinking to create new opportunities and innovative products. Both are undeniably useful, as they help generate ideas for solutions based on innovation and creativity. But these techniques, which started in the fifties, have different objectives.
While brainstorming generates new ideas, design thinking focuses on innovation and empathy with the client to create products and services that better satisfy the markets. Design thinking also places consumers at the center of the scene, turning them into cocreators of the product.
Do you remember the “carriages and cars” example in Chapter 1, w
here people came up with new ideas and concepts but still used old ways of reasoning to analyze and solve problems?
The same could happen with these two techniques. Although both are very useful, they are not intended to radically alter the forms of reasoning that people have used for years. They do not focus on adding new mental structures, many of which may be contrary to the values and principles that people already hold.
If your goal is for those around you to reason differently, brainstorming and design thinking may be techniques to use initially, but it’s reframing that will help you take that much bigger step.
With design thinking, people use familiar mental frames to solve a problem. The reframing technique forces individuals to use different forms of reasoning, many of which might not exist in the company. Both techniques complement each other and can be used together to accelerate the change.
Allow me to focus for a second on how your mind works when it tries to solve a problem. When you act on a situation, or need to make a decision, your brain’s response is usually based on what was learned during childhood and information integrated at later stages. Your mind creates a story that gives meaning to a set of assumptions, guiding you in one direction or another.
Leading Exponential Change Page 14