I recently read the statistic that 70% of organizational change efforts fail? After further investigation, this number is a rough estimate, yet it still indicates a more profound truth: Change isn't easy. Change measures are usually greeted with resistance and are not as successful as organizations would like them to be changed; they are never easy.
Wondering why?
Common understanding displays that successful change efforts hinge on visionary leadership. Leaders must make a case for the changes by demonstrating what's wrong with the current problem and how the changes will lead to a better, brighter, and sustainable future.
And if there's still resistance?
Bring about even more apparent why the changes are required! Convey charts, graphs, and experts! Make an invulnerable case. Employ data to highlight what is helpful about the changes and what's wrong with the current existence. Despite often, this only embeds resistance even more, which has confused leaders for decades and continues to perplex them today.
So, why doesn't this strategy work?
It's brilliantly basic: The brain is not concerned about facts; it cares about safety and belonging. And when employees sense change as a threat and leaders never manage those fears, everyone gets perforated in a vicious cycle of fear and resistance.
Shattering free of this cycle starts with leaders understanding how the brain typically responds to change, uncertainty and stress and using their emotional intelligence to address those fears with compassion and honesty.
Consider this everyday situation: Someone expresses a doubt (which reveals an emotional need). You can visualize the prototypical, quantitatively oriented corporate leader's response: "You're not listening. Look at the facts; we must change." This dependence on facts fails to address another critical point: People are not just rational.
The human brain is designed to dislike uncertainty; it equates it to danger.
You can shout from the mountaintop that the change is for the better and sustainable, yet when faced with uncertainty, many individuals experience pressure. And the typical stress response blockades the type of higher-level cognitive processes – like empathic and analytical thinking – required to adopt change.
In circles, we go. Leaders continue creating an argument emphasizing the change and the factual reasons, reinforcing employees' fears and the emotional imperative to resist it. A practical solution is simple, per research at Harvard Business Review: leaders should highlight continuity, or what will stay the same, in conjunction with the vision for change.
Making change efforts more successful with emotional intelligence
Two studies conducted by the Harvard Business Review found that organizational change efforts were more successful when leadership highlighted not only the vision of change but also a vision of continuity, or what will stay the same.
In one study, researchers investigated employees and their supervisors from organizations that announced organizational change plans – relocations, expansions, reorganizations, etc. The second study tested the same idea in a lab with business school students and announced changes to the curriculum to demonstrate causality.
Both studies came to the same conclusions:
When leaders spotlighted continuity – "how what is central to 'who we are as an organization will be preserved, despite the uncertainty and changes on the horizon" – they were more effective at building support.
And the impacts were more potent when uncertainty about the change was higher.
In today's workforce environment of unparalleled uncertainty, emotionally intelligent leadership is needed more than ever. Leaders ignore emotions at their risk. I believe, "Emotions drive people, and people drive performance." It's just as accurate when you replace "performance" with "change":
"Emotions drive people, and people drive change." For better or worse.
A framework for people-centered change
My proprietary DIG provides a framework for organizational change, team, and individual transformation. Integrating human-centered design— a process that puts people at the center of change and highlights bringing them on board and shifting change into a learning process.
The DIG Framework is a valuable model for those seeking to be effective and energized during planned and unplanned change through the power of design. This framework showcases design thinking and outlines its role in business strategy, creative development, and value creation.
The DIG framework divides stakeholder satisfaction development into three categories: discovering, innovating, and generating value. Each of these categories offers a series of steps that may be engaged in any order, depending on the project's size, scope, and purpose. The process is not linear and may be taken out of sequence to achieve project aims.
Especially helpful to individuals new to concepts of design research or creative processes, the DIG Framework is illustrated by a growing series of organizations and leaders who successfully used this structure in professional practice.
Imagine if leaders disbursed as much energy "bringing people on board" as they do "designing urgency" and "making the case."
What would that look like?