Changing Change
By Clark Quinn
Learning is change, really. That is, we’re learning to do new things, which is a change in our repertoire. Therefore, changing beyond ourselves, making organizational change, is learning as well. Are there similarities we can channel? Perhaps. If so, maybe we can leverage them to improve learning and organizational change. In short, we could be changing change.
So, one of the myths about change is that people resist change. There are tales of change initiatives failing at a reputed rate of 70%! Yet, we see people making changes all the time. They get married, change jobs, have kids, move house…all are recognized as big changes. What’s going on?
Peter de Jager, in A Pocketful of Change, suggests that what differentiates change in organizations versus personal change is choice. That is, people make choices to change, and resist having change imposed upon them. Which suggests that if we want successful change, we can make it a choice. It should be fairly easy to make the change plausible if there are reasons driving this change in the first place. Allowing the individuals to choose between the existing state of affairs and the intended outcomes, if presented correctly, should be obvious. Of course, there’ll still need to be a number of efforts to support change after the choice, but getting individuals to buy in is an important component.
The implications for learning are similar. We shouldn’t expect learners to embrace learning without helping them realize the reasons why this learning is important to them. I address this in my most recent tome, Make It Meaningful, where I say you need an initial hook. Once learners recognize that the performance objectives are relevant to them, their commitment is easier to count on. Then, of course, you have to maintain that relevance and have an appropriate learning design.
Another aspect of change comes from looking at innovation. (As I’ve indicated previously, innovation is learning, as is change.) Jennifer Mueller, in Creative Change, looked at barriers to innovation, and found that it comes from a conflict in goals. Organizations want innovation, but with no risk. Yet, inherently, innovation requires risk, because you have to try new things, and they may not work. Thus, organizations set up innovation processes but never approve any projects that are truly innovative!
We can again see this in learning. As Amy Edmondson let’s us know, learning requires asking questions and a willingness to make mistakes. You have to be willing to try the practice activities to receive feedback and improve. Without a true commitment to address the learning, the token attempts aren’t going to achieve the necessary conditions of meaningful contextual decisions. If you won’t accept failure, learning really can’t happen.
Then there’s the process of keeping the change going. Change management literature, e.g. work by noted change theorist John Kotter, talks about steps including preparing for change, establishing change, and securing it. Once you’re underway, you need to find those wins, and cement the change in organizational practices. Steps include finding people having success and sharing that, and providing support for people in the moment. It also means finding any barriers and removing them.
For learning, it’s similar. Julie Dirksen talks about the barriers to learning in Talk to the Elephant that are beyond just the learning design, including ways in which learning can get undermined. This includes going back to the workplace and hearing “that’s not how we do it here”. There should be a plan for supporting the learning on an ongoing basis. This includes preparing supervisors and managers to reinforce the learning, as well as finding ways to continually provide feedback over time.
Learning is change, and change is learning. Thinking about the needs and barriers for either gives you insight for the other. If you want your initiatives to be successful, learning or change, you’ve got to be willing to be changing change to align with what’s known.
Readings
de Jager, P. (2010). A Pocketful of Change. Brampton, Canada: de Jager & Company, Ltd.
Dirksen, J. (2023). Talk to the Elephant: Design Learning for Behavior Change. New Riders Press: Berkeley, CA.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 44, pp. 350-383
Hughes, M. (2011) Do 70 Per Cent of All Organizational Change Initiatives Really Fail? Journal of Change Management, 11:4, 451-464.
Kotter, J.P. (1996). Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Mueller, J. (2017). Creative Change: Why We Resist It…How We Can Embrace It. New York: Mariner Books.
Quinn, C. (2022). Make It Meaningful: Taking Learning Design from Instructional to Transformational. New York: LDA Press.