It is a confusing world.

On one hand, change is everywhere, and the pace of change is increasing as we watch. On the other, generating change in an organisation is really hard; we humans do not   like change, despite what we sometimes say. We are hard wired to resist it in the absence of a compelling reason, some set of circumstances that leaves us absolutely no option.

In the 50’s, psychologist Solomon Asch ran a series of ground-breaking experiments where he showed the power of conformity.

He shows a group of subjects two cards, one with three lines in it of different lengths, the second with a single line.  The question was, which of the three lines on card A was the same length as the line on card B?

He would go around the room, asking the question, and each person successively deliberately gave the wrong answer, until he got to the last person, the only real subject in the room. In an overwhelming majority of cases, the last person agreed with everyone else to the obviously wrong answer.

We are hard wired to conform, to agree with the group, to avoid being an outlier, even when the group is wrong; we still find it hard to do anything other than conform.

Evolutionary psychology at work.

Being outside the safety of the group, where cooperation added to the odds of survival, you conformed or you were expelled from the group, which meant you quickly ended up as sabre toothed tiger shit.

Not an attractive prospect.

There are not too many sabre toothed tigers left around, but the safety of the group is still a driving force in our behaviour, so we have to change the mind of the group.

• Create a catalytic event. When confronted by a crisis, where the status quo has clearly failed to deliver, change is suddenly made easier to implement.

• Identify the opinion leaders in the group; convince them, let them do your persuasion work for you. ‘Local’ networks and opinion leaders are very powerful as change agents. Conversely, they are in a position to block any change they do not like.

• Identify a ‘keystone’ change, one that forces other changes, that that clearly demonstrates the value of wider improvements that can be achieved. Managing a manufacturing business as a contractor, we had an assumed  capacity problem, that necessitated long runs to inventory to service demand. The result was slow inventory turn, redundant stock that could not be sold, and excessive working capital, all problems stemming from the capacity limit. On analysis, the real problem was in the scheduling of the production process, which created a bottleneck at a key piece of machinery. This was solved by rejigging the timing and order of activities, changes that were strongly resisted by staff until a mandated trial clearly demonstrated the substantial productivity benefits that accrued.  This one  change led to significant improvement in almost all other productivity and financial KPI’s.

• Create stories that the group members can relate to, that demonstrate the costs of no change are greater than the risk of change. The story related above took on a life of its own, as the staff involved rewrote history, by assuming the responsibility for suggesting and driving the ‘keystone’ change.

• Have great clarity about the benefits of the outcome after the change, how it will be achieved, and the benefits it will deliver. Again, the story above had a knock-on effect through the business, as the results of the improvements were made very public, and credit given to the staff involved.

• Embed the changes into the operating psyche of the organisation. Culture is elastic, and unless the binds of the past are comprehensively broken, they will spring back once the pressure is released.

Lemmings are persistent creatures, if not too bright. Put a barrier in place in front of the cliff, and they will climb it, unless there is an alternative path that is made to be more attractive in some way leads them in a different direction.

How are you disrupting the Lemming Effect in your enterprise?

Cartoon credit: Mike Keefe Denver Post.