How neuropsychology can help transformation projects succeed
Making behaviour change "brain friendly" increases the likelihood of success.
As I reflect on the challenges I have faced in the change projects I have driven as a business leader, most of them stem from not giving the people side of change enough priority. I focused on what needed to change to drive the desired business outcome and underestimated what it took to implement the behaviour change that delivered the outcome.
Change happens due to people doing things differently, but changing behaviour is complex. As change leaders, we often assume that if the rationale for the change makes sense (to ourselves…), making the change itself is straightforward. However, it takes more to motivate the brain to make the change.
The metaphor of the Rider and Elephant to help simplify the understanding of how your brain influences your behaviour. The Rider represents the controlled/rational/conscious part of your brain. The Elephant represents the automatic/emotional/subconscious part of your brain.
The Rider can think, or even fully believe, that we have a strong enough reason to change, but this is not enough for the whole brain to be motivated to make the change. The Elephant will do whatever it takes to resist using precious energy to make a change. We need to feel that the behaviour change is important, not just think it is!
The people side of change
Change happens at the individual level, which is essential to remember when planning your transformation project. Better addressing the people-side of change will increase the likelihood of success.
This article describes how to better address the people side of change by making your change effort more brain-friendly. Making it more brain-friendly will make it easier for individuals to change behaviour and develop their change competency.
You can add brain-friendliness to your change model of choice. This article suggests how by relating the recommendations to the Prosci ADKAR Model‘s five goals/outcomes of an individual’s successful change journey:
Awareness of the business reasons for the change.
Desire to engage and participate in the change.
Knowledge about how to change.
Ability to realise or implement the change at the required performance level.
Reinforcement to ensure change sticks.
The Prosci ADKAR Model is a framework for understanding and managing individual change.
Create a sense of purpose
Awareness and Desire – the first two outcomes prescribed by the ADKAR Model – are achieved by creating a sense of purpose. However, that is much easier said than done!
Having a sense of purpose is related to having the intention to accomplish something meaningful to you and make a positive difference for others.
Awareness of the reason for the change is essential, but it doesn’t necessarily create the desire to change. Communication that helps us rationally understand why change is needed satisfies the Rider. The most challenging part is creating the desire to change. Creating desire is difficult because what motivates us and what makes us resist change is very individual.
Resistance comes from our perception of the change. Uncertainty/ambiguity, past negative experiences, or not satisfying our social needs such as sleep and recognition will trigger the Elephant to launch our fight/flight/freeze threat response. It happens automatically and unconsciously. When this response is triggered, fewer resources (like oxygen and glucose) are available to the Rider, which will reduce our ability to use our analytical thinking, creativity, focusing attention, self-control, planning and language. The effect is resistance to change.
The desire to change comes from intrinsic motivation. For sustainable behaviour change, it is crucial to understand what will turn a “should do” into a “want to” or “love to”.
Hence engaging people at the individual level is necessary to ensure their fears and motivations are considered.
Help people learn how to change
Once people have the desire to change, they need to know how. As outlined in the ADKAR Model, the Knowledge outcome is achieved when people have the information, training and education necessary to understand how to change. Two aspects of learning how to change need to be addressed: Learning how to perform the new behaviour and learning how to change behaviour.
In my experience, the emphasis is often placed on training on what to do differently, but less on how. The result is a gap between knowing and doing, which often hinders or slows change.
Limit the amount of concurrent change
Obviously, the more significant the change, the harder it is to overcome.
Practising new behaviour requires conscious effort, fully activating the Rider. The Rider consumes significant energy. If the change is too big, the Elephant will do all it can to resist it because it wants to conserve energy. Therefore it is better to limit the amount of behaviour change you are asking an individual to make at once.
Instead, consider sequencing behaviour changes starting with the most critical behaviour first. You might see your change effort as a project with a start and an end date. But the reality is that change is constant. Hence, developing the individual’s competency to change as part of every change you implement will improve your organisation's agility.
Once you have determined the new or changed behaviour, make it small and specific. This gap between knowing and doing can be closed by involving people very specifically specifying how they will perform the new behaviour. It is better to achieve a small win regularly, as this will help you build enough attention density to turn the new behaviour into a habit.
Free up capacity for change
The ADKAR Model defines Ability as the ability to realise or implement the change at the required performance level. Implementing the change takes conscious effort, which means we need the Rider to have sufficient resources to give us the ability to change.
Scientific experiments show us that the different parts of our brain compete for its limited resources like oxygen and glucose. The Rider also has a limited, shared resource. For example, using effort on its self-control capability will limit the resources we have left for changing behaviour.
So if we want to maintain the capacity of the Rider to execute the capabilities required to change behaviour, we must implement enabling behaviours to meet our physical needs, such as sleep, recovery, and movement.
Without our physical needs, our Rider cannot function optimally, and our elephant launches the threat response (defaulting behaviour to self-preservation, reactivity and heightened anger). When the elephant takes over, our ability to change is significantly hampered.
Our physical needs are often depleted without us being aware. However, our stress levels, sleep, recovery and movement can be measured and managed to give us a data-driven way of improving the effectiveness of our behaviour.
Provide an enabling environment
The Rider’s ability to use its foundational capabilities is affected by our social and physical needs. In the context of organisational change, our social needs are influenced by the work environment. Hence we must create an enabling environment. In an enabling environment, people need to feel safe.
When the elephant detects a threat, his amygdala launches the fight/flight/freeze response. When this response is triggered, fewer resources (like oxygen and glucose) are available to the Rider. As soon as we enter a room with others or any form of group, our elephant senses whether we are safe or not.
For example, if we work in a zero failure work culture, we might not feel safe; a mistake could have serious consequences (losing our reputation, our manager’s respect or even the job). In such a culture, our elephant’s threat response is constantly being triggered, which will mean our brain’s performance will be sub-optimal, and so will our ability to change.
The final outcome of the ADKAR model – Reinforcement – is the measurement of adoption, corrective actions and recognition of successful change. If the change is not reinforced in a way that creates an enabling environment, it will have the opposite effect.
An enabling environment can be created by establishing a sense of belonging in the team, increasing the levels of autonomy (do people have accountability and enough decision-making power?), and providing genuine recognition. Creating an enabling environment is arguably our most important objective as leaders. The culture we create through our behaviours can make or break an enabling environment.
Consider it a new system of functioning
Don’t just view your transformation as a project. Transformation is ongoing, and the capability to change should be developed like a muscle.
Developing your change muscle will increase your personal and organisational agility and strengthen your ability to respond constructively to change.
By making it more brain-friendly, addressing the people side of change creates the physiological conditions you need to make your transformation project successful.