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How To Fix Your Failing Change Management Plan

Forbes Coaches Council

Dr. Jon Finn is the Author of “The Habit Mechanic” and Founder of the award-winning Tougher Minds consultancy.

Is your strategy to create a workforce that feels overwhelmed and busier than ever?

Is it designed to make your people work longer hours where there is a false choice between "just getting it done" or "getting it done better" (where only the former is possible)?

Is it to make your people feel so overstretched that they cannot progress on mission-critical projects, making it impossible for meaningful positive change to happen in your business?

Of course, these are not your, or any other business’s, strategic objectives. Yet in our volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, many businesses are getting better and better at achieving them.

So why is this happening?

Our VUCA world has changed the way we work, communicate and socialize. These fundamental changes to how we live mean that business leaders are under pressure to figure out how to rapidly and successfully adapt their organizations. But traditional strategic planning and change management approaches don’t cut it anymore. Unless business leaders can figure out better ways to make change happen, their organizations may be doomed to failure.

After spending over 16 years researching how businesses can succeed in our complex and challenging world—and helping hundreds of clients do just that—I have come to one inescapable conclusion, which I will share with you shortly.

Why are traditional strategic plans failing?

To get underneath the bonnet of this, I want to share a story of iconic sporting success. The athlete in question won by working out how to successfully and rapidly adapt faster than the competition.

They said it couldn’t be done. They said it was not possible, but on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister became the first person to run a sub-four-minute mile. Some of the world’s best runners and coaches had been attempting to break this record for years, and it was beginning to look impossible.

In the 1950s, Bannister was not the only elite athlete trying to break that four-minute barrier. The record was also being pursued by American Wes Santee and Australian John Landy.

So why did Bannister succeed first, where many others had failed?

Bannister’s Secret Advantage

Running was only Bannister’s hobby; his profession was medicine. At Oxford University, he was training to be a medical doctor. He was also a research scholar studying the respiratory system. As his research participants were running on treadmills in the university laboratory, Bannister was investigating the effects of oxygen levels on their performance. This was cutting-edge research.

As stated in Neal Bascomb’s The Perfect Mile, “few had examined the body’s capacity to withstand punishment to the extent that Bannister did.”

Bannister stated that he knew enough about medicine and physiology to know it was physically possible to run a sub-four-minute-mile. He was not interested in the art of running fast. He was interested in science.

It’s clear that Roger Bannister was an early pioneer in what we now call sports science. He wanted to understand the inner workings of his body and how it responded to training, much like a Formula 1 racing car mechanic understands the inner workings of an engine.

In contrast, others trying to break the four-minute mile likely had a less sophisticated understanding of how their training impacted their bodies.

Most of Bannister’s "opponents" were taking what scientists call a “black-box” approach. In science, a black-box approach means examining or testing a complex system or process (e.g., how your brain works) without actually understanding what is going on inside it.

For example, you are told off by your boss (input). This makes you feel stressed and angry (output). But you don’t actually know what being told off did to your brain and body. You just know that it made you feel angry.

In the case of Bannister’s racing colleagues, they were focusing on the type of training they were doing (the input) and the running times they were achieving (the output). As Bascomb explains, they were not scientifically measuring the effect their training was having on the inner workings of their bodies. They were treating it like a black box.

So what?

Well, in simple terms, these detailed scientific insights allowed Bannister to gain a competitive advantage. He made his training more efficient and effective than others' and was able to shave precious seconds off his running time.

What does this mean for your business?

Traditional strategic planning and change management approaches use a black-box approach to behavior change (i.e., they are like old-school training methods that are more likely to leave you with a hamstring strain than a personal best). If you want your business to become excellent at change management, you need to take a scientific approach.

Which science should you focus on?

You need to use scientific insights about what humans have evolved to do (e.g., from neuroscience, behavioral science and psychology) so you can make it easier for your people to do the things you need them to do to make your business succeed. Your guiding understanding should be that at least 98% of what they do and think is automatic and semi-automatic behavior (i.e., habits). Your people don’t necessarily do what they know they should do; they do what they are in the habit of doing.

By using a scientific approach to change management, senior leaders are able to transition from using outdated and ineffective knowledge-based strategies and start using powerful habit-based strategies. The latter supercharges change.

The main lesson I have learned about effective change management? Forget the well-worn idea that your people are your greatest asset. It isn’t your people, it’s their habits. Forget human capital and focus on "habit capital."

Your people’s habits are like an undiscovered gold mine that is sitting right beneath your feet. But you can only access it by using science to learn more about how to accelerate change in your business.


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