The way we work is evolving
practically every moment of every day.
New approaches keep emerging
and the pressure to innovate is high.
But too often even the
most promising new ideas
can fail to get across the finish line.
Why?
(light music)
I'm Professor David Schonthal,
and I've spent my career thinking
about why some new ideas,
businesses and systems succeed,
while others - especially
good ones - end up failing.
Over and over, I've seen great ideas
that never make it off the ground,
and it's not because the
ideas aren't worthy, many are.
Instead, it's because of
how they're introduced
into the world.
As it turns out,
there's some fascinating - and
predictable - human factors
that can stop new ideas in their tracks.
My colleague Loran Nordgren and I
call these human factors "Frictions".
Frictions are the psychological
forces that oppose change.
The four we've identified are:
Number one: Inertia.
Our overwhelming tendency
to stick with what we know,
even though we know the
current system is inadequate.
Friction number two: Effort.
The perceived exertion required
in order to make a change happen.
The third Friction is Emotion.
The unintended negative emotions triggered
by the suggested change.
And number four is Reactance.
Our impulse to resist
being changed by others,
or what I like to call
the "don't tell me what to do" Friction.
So, when it comes to
introducing new ways of working,
how can we overcome these Frictions?
Let me give you a couple of examples.
For example number one,
let's say your company is switching over
to a new internal software system.
You and the tech team are confident
that this change will help
make everyone's life easier
and save the company money.
But when you announce it,
you're surprised to meet
a lot of resistance.
People aren't eagerly
signing up for the training,
and they're saying, "you know what?
I'm cool. I'm just gonna stick
with the existing system."
Turns out you've triggered
the Friction of Inertia.
People feel like they're
being forced to leave a system
that they're comfortable with.
And even though the new software
will make everyone's life easier,
the human instinct to resist
change is getting in the way.
One tactic to avoid
triggering this Friction
is to shrink the size of the change.
In other words, position the change
not as one big major system shift,
but as a series of smaller experiments.
Could we try this new software
out for a month or two,
and then decide whether or not
it should become our new system?
Starting small and framing
new ideas as experiments
are useful tactics
because they make the
change less intimidating -
plus, people know that
experiments can be undone,
or even totally fail.
And here's example number two.
Let's say, and tell me
if this sounds familiar,
your company wants the organization
to embrace a new commitment to innovation.
The Friction that this
could trigger is effort -
meaning people feel like
they need to take on
all of the cognitive
effort of figuring out
exactly what this change means for them,
and how to build it into their
day-to-day responsibilities.
For employees, directives
like "be more innovative"
are ambiguous and often confusing.
Instead of feeling inspired and motivated,
people feel paralyzed.
One tactic for making this
idea feel less ambiguous
is road mapping.
Turn this big directive
into a series of steps.
Now, getting concrete in this way
can not only help a team see
where you're asking them to go,
but they can see how to get there.
Ultimately, the secret to getting buy-in
to new ways of working
is about anticipating the frictions
that your change could stir up,
and then putting just as much thought
into how you introduce those ideas
as you put into designing the idea itself.
The results of doing this
can be even more valuable
than generating simple buy-in:
You might even see the
transformation of your listeners
from passive recipients of an idea
to enthusiastic champions
of new ways of working.
(upbeat jazz music)