Most books on organizational change use frameworks written in and appealing to a rational state of mind. Typical messages are:
- Write a clear and appealing business case for the change
- Communicate in a structured and planned way to all stakeholders involved in the change
However, when we are faced with change, we rarely react rationally. The emotional part of our brain decides how we feel about the change and this shapes our (first) behavioral reaction. The insight that ‘the rational brain part is actually secondary to the emotional part and can often only manage the direction given by this latter one’ is the foundation of the book ‘SWITCH - How to Change Things When Change is Hard’ written by Chip and Dan Heath. Chip and Dan explain how to manage the elephant, a metaphor for the emotional brain part.
They offer some fascinating insights:
- Use positive emotions to initiate the change, since they broaden our thinking and stimulate our brain to experiment and look for new experiences. Negative emotions aroused by a crisis as burning platform for the change only narrow our thinking span and solicit the fight/flight/avoid reflex.
- Use the ‘attribution error’ to your advantage and realize that what seems to be a human-problem is often a situation-problem. The attribution error is people's tendency to place an undue heavy emphasis on internal characteristics to explain someone else's behavior in a given situation, rather than thinking about external situational factors. And since it is easier to adapt the situation than the person, this might just do the trick.
If you want to know more about “rallying the herd and steering the elephant”, we highly recommend ‘SWITCH’.
