Figure 1: Rick Maurer’s Cycle of Change:
When you are in the dark, you do not perceive any need to change. You are happy and comfortable with things the way they are. This can be true for groups as well as individuals. This position enjoys a high degree of inertia as we stay in the routine of what we know. It is a comfortable state (except for those opportunities that keep getting missed and those nagging problems that keep creeping up).
Change expert Rick Maurer provides an excellent framework to understand the Cycle of Change in his book Beyond the Wall of Resistance (Bard Press, 2010). The cycle is presented below in Figure 1.
If you are contemplating significant change, check yourself by asking these questions:
1. Can I clearly state the challenge so everyone can understand what it is and why it is important?
Maurer notes that this stage is often the most overlooked. His research found “in most successful changes, the people who needed to support the new idea felt a compelling need for change. They understood why something new was necessary. In those changes that actually made matters ‘significantly worse,’ less than a quarter of the stakeholders saw a need for change.”
The diagram captures the natural state in which many people find themselves – in the dark.
Leaders can often have staff or consultants complete a project. But compelling change is driven by individuals personally seeing the challenge and engaging in the need to do something differently. It takes those levels of engagement for change to be successful.
The cycle of change begins when someone sees the challenge. This could be a definite threat to yourself or to your organization. It could also be an opportunity for growth or expansion. Either way, seeing the challenge awakens the need to change.
In organizations, you often have great difficulty in getting everyone (or at least the key executives) to agree on what the challenge is and how it should be addressed. In many cases, your own clear understanding and sense of urgency can blind you to the fact that others have not similarly crossed a tipping point of recognition.
3. Do your employees trust management’s ability to successfully make these changes?
2. Do the people who are essential to the success of the change strongly believe something needs to be done now? As Maurer describes it, do they feel it?
I look forward to hearing your experiences. I will be spending more time with Rick Maurer. Please let me know what I can ask him on your behalf.
This starts in individuals with a growing recognition of the challenge akin to seeing a ship on the horizon that begins as a speck and continues to grow as it comes closer. Within an organization, individuals often recognize the challenge at different points. They then must be gathered into action as a group. These concerns begin to accumulate until, both individually and collectively Big Fat Finance, you cross a tipping point where the challenge is recognized.
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