Day 31: Three waves of resistance

The shores of the East Coast are ruggedly beautiful and I found myself staring at the breaking waves for a very long time today. The ageless battle between the ocean and the land with constantly shifting frontiers. When I was 12 years old there used to be a family of about 20 dolphins that would patrol up and down the coast every day. Watching them play in the waves before going to school made the whole day feel different. Three or four dolphins would challenge each other in surfing contests, testing each other to see who tumbled out of the breaking wave last. Today that family came by and now has about 250 members. Their playful patrol seems to have netted a following.

Watching the waves made me think about transformation in organizations. For the first three months of this year I worked with a group of nurses, physicians and support staff to transform the patient experience at a maternity unit. Transforming any organization can feel like the battle between the sea and the shifting sands of a shoreline. Organizational entropy can out wait even the most enthusiastic tsunami of consultants.

It seems though that one always faces the same three waves of resistance. At first the resistance is driven by the question: "Who are you?" Without trust and demonstrating a true empathetic connection with the people who make up an organization it is very hard to even get through the door. Gossip, rumors and general conversation on the corridors very quickly set the tone, determining if you will get to see inside the kimono. Without this trust you are just listening to PR.

The second wave is typified by the question: "Why this solution?" When theoretical principles and frameworks start turning into real action, the art of doing, the questions become more focussed on the content of change. I wonder if in this phase, it is not easier to introduce radical change, where there is little or no precedent anchoring commitment to old ways. As Eugene Marais noted, when ant colonies shift from one home to a new one, almost a third of the ants are engaged in carrying stuff back to their old home.

The way in which solutions are derived is more important than the actual solutions though. In this particular case we quickly shifted the mood in the unit by prototyping and introducing an idea from one of the cleaning staff. As a unionized worker who had been at the hospital for over 20 years she would officially be viewed as low in status. In reality her opinions and endorsement was key in shifting informal support for the solutions. The fact that the organization was willing to listen to even the lowest ranking staff meant that the staff were more willing to listen, and take risks for the organization. The "who" trumps the "what."

The third and most subtle wave of resistance usually comes after most transformation engagements end and I am convinced it is the reason most transformation fails. The wave is driven by the question: "Why don't other people understand?"

Once the emotions of the core team have shifted to a new place it is very hard to imagine a mind that does not understand and has not shifted. "This is obvious? Why are they so stupid?" I can't remember who said this but the mind is an infinitely flexible thing however once it has been stretched by an idea it cannot return to its original shape. Very few transformation projects prepare the change team for the resistance they will encounter from the rest of the business. In this particular engagement I don't think I would have realized just how hard this new task is if we hadn't committed to an 8 week stewardship role.

Most transformation projects focus on defining the organizational shape and expected behaviors. The skills people learn are in service of this functional shift, but how many people are building the specific skills needed to overcome internal resistance? The first and most probably most important skill is in my opinion to overcome the division in thought, there is no "us the enlightened" and "them the great unwashed." Sustaining unity of purpose through transition is a very special talent which is most probably why the shape of organizations hang so slowly in the face of transformation.

Turning the playful family of dolphins from 20 to 250 could be an instructive metaphor for dealing with the waves of change. Prototyping playful new behaviors early on establishes norms that make it easier for people to feel natural in their new organizational environment.