“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” ~Maria Robinson.

As managers today, we are being challenged to use and teach one skill more than all the others in our toolbox—adapting to and teaching change successfully. Just pause a moment and put the really big picture on your radar screen. Think about these major transformations going on in our world today:

• We have already moved from the definitive “Manufacturing Age,” dealing with finite things and measurable performance to the uncertain “Information Age,” trying to cope with infinite ideas, and un-measurable performance.

• Our world has shifted from a familiar, known, secure and ordered one to another one which is quickly becoming unfamiliar, unknown, insecure and chaotic.

• We traded a body of manageable knowledge we could deal with for this unmanageable information overload that is drowning us all.

• We are struggling to let go of a convergent, zero-sum win-lose game mentality to keep up with a divergent, creative win-win chase into the invisible.

These major transformations translate to some very uncomfortable conflicts in the workplace:

• Shrinking resources vs. increased demand for better performance. Everyone wants more for less.

• Knowing what to do vs. knowing where and how to start. Finding and doing what matters most is a tedious quest. You have to plow through the chaos to get to the land of simple.

• Separating symptoms from problems vs. solving problems with long term solutions. Giving up the ease of short-term quick fixes in exchange for the time and effort required of permanent cures, is not an easy choice to make.

• Traditional ways of managing and training vs. changing our whole approach to these things. It is high likely we are heading into uncharted waters without a map, as our management prescriptions have reaching our limit of knowing.

• Intelligence and common sense vs. flexibility and open-mindedness. This is a damned if you do and damned if you don’t dilemma that doesn’t seem to have a middle ground.

Obviously change IS the solution here, but there is one very serious obstacle. The human brain resists change. Here are a few tricks our brain plays on us, which interfere with accepting and teaching change adaptation skills:

• The brain is an efficiency machine. It isn’t interested in capturing the whole complex truth or complicated, inter-related realities out there, and much prefers homeostasis and balance.

• The brain doesn’t like new, unfamiliar stuff. If something doesn’t fit comfortably with what is already known, then it doesn’t get entry, despite compelling evidence that it should. An oddly the stuff that has earned entry is not likely to depart despite proof that it should.

• All the brain’s information feeders are faulty. The senses, authority sources, perceptions, thinking, instincts, intuitions, scientific method, experiencing and especially language all have their shortcomings which can lead to very incorrect and incomplete information that is believed to be certain and true, and really isn’t, and then perpetuated.

• The brain oversimplifies things. The main over-simplification habit is dualistic thinking in which everything is either this or that, true or false, good or bad, or useful or useless. Such extreme polarizations are artificial of course, even having their own added artificial judgments on top, as desirable or undesirable.

• The brain fills in gaps. We are driven to understand things and will settle for just about any answer that adequately fills an empty space. We fill a lot of these gaps with our assumptions that we never seem to remember or have enough time to check out for validity.

• The brain connects unconnected things. When you see two things happening in close proximity in time and space, it is like they are super glued together as one event. Let it suffice to say this is one of many illusions perpetrated by the brain.

• Emotions confuse the brain. And in the end it really isn’t what you know that counts, but rather how you feel about what you know. And untangling thoughts and feelings is near impossible because we can never figure out where one stops and the other starts. The result is unclear confusion, even when you figure out what your emotions are trying to tell you, because you are interpreting non-verbal communication verbally and you really can’t do that.

Here are two important insights that can help you get better at this change crafting process—applying it to yourself so you can demonstrate it to others: (a) Open-mindedness to change comes from the heart, not the mind (b) needed changes only start when you critique and question the validity of your own mind’s thinking “objectively,” giving up the over-identity of your “self” with the certainties your brain has convinced you are so. This is a personal transformation that doesn’t happen overnight.

When we understand these two important insights we arrive at the very humble but beneficial conclusion that “what we think we know may not necessarily be so.” Hmmm. That wake-up call sets us on the road to learning what it is we need to know to be successful in accepting change ourselves—changing our approach to trying to change others—so we can finally be successful.

Success at anything is usually a matter of learning positive things from important failure lessons. Here are my own painful failure lessons:

• Trying to change the wrong thing.

• Trying to change too much.

• Thinking I could change other people.

• Being too certain and inflexible with my approach.

• Imposing a change without getting input.

• Not translating their abstract origin into practical enough terms.

• Not dealing with negative resistances or selling the positives.

If you are struggling with trying to teach old dogs new tricks in your organization, try this carefully crafted change prescription package that comes out of the ashes of failure:

PICK YOUR BATTLES TO WIN THE WAR.

Probably the one mistake that accounts for the quickest failure in trying to implement the best change with the best intention, is that you are trying to change the wrong thing, which most often turns out to be too big. You can’t close the huge gap that exists today between management and employees in one clean swoop. It has to be several small swats. And having up-front and personal conversations with key players often reveals what the right change is.

KNOW YOUR INTENT.

You can achieve a much more sustaining level of success if you know and stick with the right primary purpose. And when you are doing the right thing in the right way for the right reasons, you are much more likely to get the right results. That is simply too much “rightness” to go wrong. Whatever you think your purpose is, keep asking the “why” question until there is nowhere else to go and you will be where you need to be in this process.

ACKNOWLEDGE THE DIFFICULTY

Whether we are a changer or a changee, we have something very important in common. All of us resist change to some degree or another. We have to give up something that is comfortable and familiar and let go to the unknown and unfamiliar. That is not easy. Acknowledging the difficulty you have yourself with adapting to change can bridge the gap between you and your change audience, especially when you have all these other things in alignment.

CHANGE YOUR APPROACH

I was trained by experts to be an effective counseling psychologist. But all the great training didn’t do a bit of good until I realized that I couldn’t change another person’s thinking or behaving… until I spent a great deal of time understanding the other person, which finally lead me to the inevitable conclusion that I had to change something about myself to be successful in helping another person. And all that required was for me to change something in my approach.

REMOVE RESISTANCES

Strong resistances can defeat the best intentioned changes. Such resistances usually have to do with a few things: (a) people already being overloaded and needing something to be taken off their plates to make room for a proposed change (b) illegitimate fears that just need to be exposed and talked about (c) wrong opinions and information about the potential negatives of the change or not enough about the positives (d) organizational counter-sanctions and below-the-surface power influences that sabotage productive change.

SELL THE POSITIVES.

If you can’t come up with five really good reasons why your proposed change won’t benefit everyone, you may not be trying to bring about the right change. I am currently trying to sell the change of thinking with a better security mind to security officers I manage. I can look them in the eyes and tell them for sure: (a) you will improve your marketability with this skill (b) you will succeed, get rewarded and feel good (c) you will help the organization grow and create more opportunities for yourself (d) you will be earning your wage and improving your present and future (e) you can’t thrive or even survive today without improving the quality of your thinking.

REWARD PROGRESS.

The gap between where we want to be and where we actually are is usually much larger than we want it to be. It is easy to miss spotting progress in a change taking hold, closing the gap and moving forward. Look closely and don’t miss the opportunity to reward progress. This is where you have to manage your own impatience.

In conclusion, every positive, productive little change we strive for is just part of a bigger success formula that was pre-established long ago:

1. Connect with people emotionally.

2. Keep forever open to learning, growing and improving.

3. Find and focus on your purpose.

4. Discover meaning.

5. Live your success with passion and share it with others.

Author's Bio: 

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA, along with being a Sport Psychologist, Reality Repair Coach, Photographer and Writer. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, Re-braining for 2000 (MJR Publishing), Passwords to the Prosperity Zone (Authorlink Press), You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence), The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree), and Do What Matters Most and “P” Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers). This article is part of his new book Reality Repair Rx coming soon. Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net