The President of Inflexco, John Rocco, was excited by the possibilities presented by a new client the company had just acquired. This new piece of business would double the organization’s sales and profits in the new year. It would provide the company’s workers with stimulating challenges that represented great opportunities for personal growth and fulfillment. Rocco called a company town hall meeting and, with great fanfare, made the announcement about the company’s new client and the endless possibilities that lay ahead. That night he lay in bed exhilarated thinking about the thrilling ride that the company and its workers was about to take.
Sadly, the whole initiative started to derail. Inflexco’s employees actively resisted the new initiative, causing untold headaches and doubt in the minds of the new client’s management team. Problems mounted and Inflexco couldn't meet pressing deadlines. Rocco pressed the company’s employees to work harder and tried to motivate them with monetary incentives, but nothing seemed to work. Six months later, the project was dead in the water. The new client abandoned ship and a great business opportunity was squandered. Needless to say, Rocco was irate and couldn't even remotely understand what went wrong.
This was written with Robert Paris.
Why the resistance?
Despite the lucrative business prospects and the opportunity for Inflexco’s employees to grow, develop and earn extra income, the project failed. Rocco kept thinking to himself, “Why was there such resistance to what was clearly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?”
Neuroscientists have an excellent idea of what went wrong at Inflexco. The emerging field of neuroleadership, that applies knowledge of the brain to management and leadership, is revealing that people naturally resist change. In fact, to the human brain, change is pain. This is exactly what happened at Inflexco – the huge project generated by the company’s new client switched on the “fight or flight” networks in the brains of the company’s workers. This process drowned out the possible rewards presented by this potential new business – causing lots of anxiety and stress that overwhelmed workers and eventually doomed the project to failure. Unfortunately, this reality is experienced by the majority of companies around the world on a daily basis.
The brain and change
If Rocco had better knowledge of the human brain, he would have understood his employees’ natural resistance to change and, more importantly, how to overcome it. When new external stimuli (such as challenges represented by a new client and project) enter the brain, they are automatically compared to existing knowledge. If the new stimuli are consistent with what the brain already knows, there’s no problem. But if they conflict with existing knowledge, the brain’s alarm system turns on – likely as a survival mechanism. Here are three things that happen in the brain when significant change occurs:
1. The brain’s error detection system switches on
When change occurs and the brain receives new incoming stimuli that conflict with existing mental maps, the brain’s natural error detection system turns on. Regions of the brain that are connected to its emotional center (the Amygdala) are activated and drain limited mental resources from the area of the brain associated with rational thought (the Prefrontal Cortex). As a result, change causes us to act more emotionally and impulsively and not rationally. In the case of Inflexco’s employees, feelings of fear, skepticism and anxiety overpowered their ability to rationally think of the rewards associated with the new project.
2. The brain’s working memory gets overwhelmed
The introduction of new stimuli into the brain activates its working memory. This part of the brain is very limited in its capacity and can only hold a few thoughts at one time. Additionally, working memory fatigues easily and requires lots of energy. Therefore, incoming new stimuli overwhelm working memory and deplete its resources – a very tiring process. Rapid change at Inflexco overpowered the brains of its employees and exhausted them – resulting in resistance to change efforts.
3. The brain’s negativity bias
The brain has five times the number of negative neural networks than it does positive ones. This is important for survival reasons. Dr. Evian Gordon defines the “negativity bias” as “the phenomenon by which humans pay more attention and give more weight to negative rather than positive experience or other kinds of information”. The change brought about by Inflexco’s new project was interpreted as negative by its employees and a great source of stress. This negativity was contagious and caused a multitude of negative chatter within the company.
How can resistance to change be overcome?
The key for managers to overcome the brain’s natural resistance to change is to disarm its “fight or flight” networks. Here are three change management strategies that Rocco should have used to help his employees accept and even embrace the change that the new project generated:
1. Become an adaptable organization – A highly successful strategy used by leaders to help employees become comfortable with change is to help them be proactive in anticipating potential problems and threats. On an ongoing basis, these leaders gather teams of employees and work together to help them identify potential problems before they occur. In this way, when a threat actually happens, employees have already anticipated it – turning off the brain’s “fight or flight” networks.
2. Be open and transparent in communications with employees – A common mistake that senior managers make is trying to withhold information from their employees. They jealously guard important information that they judge to be too “sensitive” or “confidential”. Unfortunately, this policy rarely works as employees are able to sense what is going on and, with their innate negativity biases, start negative chatter. A better strategy is to treat them like adults and share information with them in a manner that is frank, open and encouraging – helping to prevent the negative talk that would have permeated their brains.
3. Involve employees in creating solutions and action plans – A highly effective change management strategy is to focus employees on the main challenge and to then involve them in identifying solutions and creating their own action plans. This gives them a feeling of control over their work and a sense of ownership. The brain is wired so that people with a sense of autonomy in their work feel rewarded instead of dealing with the negative emotions associated with their brains’ “fight or flight” networks.
A word of caution – every brain is wired differently and, indeed, some employees will not only accept change but embrace it. It is important to recognize these individual differences. However, neuroscientific evidence is clear that, from the brain’s perspective, change is pain. The above tries to explain the reasons behind this and recommends three effective change management strategies. Roccos of the world – pay attention!
For more on this emerging field, an excellent starting point is Your Brain at Work by David Rock, it refers to the research underlying neuroleadership and presents the theory in an easy-to-understand manner.
Robert Paris has designed and facilitated leadership development programs for organizations such as the Cirque du Soleil globally. He is a pioneer in applying emerging knowledge of the brain to leadership training programs and is only one a few hundred people around the world with a Certificate in the Foundations of Neuroleadership. Robert has developed expertise in using visual stimuli to help individuals and teams use more of their brains’ resources to better innovate, talk authentically and accept change.
