Our Philosophy of Change

Change tends to be opposed for reasons evident even at the surface. Psychology anticipates and predicts it.

• Comfortable people tend to be happier and more productive.
• Stability creates comfort; novelty reduces it. New things challenge us to learn and adapt. We become more anxious and tentative, reducing productivity.
• Recognition increases comfort (“Better the devil you know” after all.), feeding a negative bias known as loss aversion.
• We value what we might lose more than any potential gain. Because change often represents loss (of what we know) not gain (of what we imagine), it makes sense that particularly where income depends on it we strongly resist change. Loss aversion, anti-change logic might unfold this way:

1. 1.  I earn money doing what I do.
   2.  I have experience, knowledge, and skill; few things surprise me.
   3.  Change may render that experience, knowledge, and skill irrelevant so I will be less effective.
   4.  If I am less effective, my value may decrease and I will lose my income/status/relations/…
   5.  I won’t change.

• People invest in their situations; we challenge anything that threatens our investments.
  • Investment can be self-identification, education/skill, knowledge, relationships, social status, (process) personalization, or any of hundreds of other things.
• Most people are uncomfortable with ambiguities that challenge understanding of the environment and situation.
• Heightened uncertainty makes us feel less in control.
• People—even (senior) leaders advocating change—are driven by incentives. C-Suite leaders are still just employees who experiences loss aversion as they drive forward.
• Leaders are people, and people respond to people. One leader’s bias, especially if that leader (who might be a “peer”) has influence, can move a vast swath of the organization to oppose a change.

Change provoking organizational anxiety is as predictable as natural law. Except when not changing is a clear and present, mortal danger (and even then…), organizations often convince themselves—even briefly—that persisting, staying the course, steady as she goes, working harder, doubling-down, and so on is prudent. Certainly as compared to ambiguous change. The greater the organization’s history of success, the stronger this tendency.

But for a steady organization, fully developed with things to protect, one that has weathered storms and evolved gently—imperceptibly—over time, incremental adjustment is prudent. In a group, it can be more personally risky to try something new than to stick with the accepted. (This is all part of the philosophy of motivation.) Unaccepted actions are commonly painted as acts of desperation. Nobody wants to be “desperate” no matter how desperate the circumstance. The market never rewards such an organization or individual for a successful risk as much as it will penalize it for not wildly succeeding with what it deems a “gamble.”

Yet, for an organization under siege, yet to find its legs, bent on a yet-to-be-discovered future, aggressive change is prudent. Try new things. Innovate. Shake it up. Fire the coach. It can be difficult to see or appreciate context in which change is sensible or even essential. Most people have a hard time imagining circumstances not substantially as they are. Thus, change is rarely judged prudent for a previously successful organization until prevailing conditions are seen and accepted as existential by all who count and can have an effect.