The Corporate Culture Survival Guide by Edgar H. Schein & Peter A. Schein

Author:Edgar H. Schein & Peter A. Schein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119212300
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2019-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Change Principles

Given that the force field has both driving and restraining forces, how then does change occur? What moves the equilibrium? What motivates learning? Three principles come into play.

Change Principle 1

Learning or change takes place only when the driving forces are greater than the restraining forces and/or when survival anxiety is greater than learning anxiety.

From: DRIVING FORCES = RESTRAINING FORCES

To: DRIVING FORCES > RESTRAINING FORCES

If we think of this as a simple equation, it becomes obvious that this result can be achieved in either of two ways. The change leader can escalate the driving forces by being more persuasive, adding incentives, increasing threats, or in some other way pressuring the learner to begin the unlearning and new learning processes. That often seems like the obvious way to go because those driving forces are usually under the control of the change leader. However, it has also been discovered that increasing the driving forces often just increases the restraining forces, the learner resists more, the total tension in the system increases, and potential conflict becomes more probable.

The equation can also come out in favor of driving forces being greater by reducing the restraining forces. That means the change leader needs to understand the nature of the two anxieties, what the learner is really afraid of, and consider how those fears could be reduced. This approach is more difficult because it may take much more time and effort to build a relationship with the learners that will make them feel psychologically safe enough to reveal their anxieties, to identify for the change leader what will need to be done for the learners to stop resisting.

Paradoxically, this approach requires the leader first to become a learner, to form a relationship with the target learners that will motivate them to speak up. When change leaders work on building such relationships they discover that the involvement in the relationship itself becomes the key motivator for the learners to begin to give something up and learn something new.

We speak of “involving the change target,” and what this means is not just asking a few questions and observing the current state, but to actually building a relationship that becomes more personal and less transactional. This can be stated as the second principle of change.

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