Rejection of change. What is "immunity to change" and how to deal with it? Three main problems

Research from Harvard professors to help you overcome inertia and "immunity to change" in your company.

A recent study found that if cardiologists seriously warn their at-risk patients that they will literally die if they don't make lifestyle changes—diet, exercise, and quit smoking—only one in seven such patients turns out to be capable of major changes in his life!

If people are unwilling to change even when their own lives are at stake, how can leaders at every level in different organizations expect success from the changes they make (even though employees can wholeheartedly support them), when the stakes and possible are the returns from these activities not at all as high as in the case of heart patients?

As with cardiological patients, the problems with change that today's leaders and their teams face are, for the most part, not problems of will. The problem is our inability to bridge the gap between what we sincerely and even passionately want and what we are truly capable of. Closing this gap is the main problem of psychology in the twenty-first century.

In their book, Keegan and Lahey show how you can overcome "immunity to change" and drive a company forward.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part introduces you to a new understanding of change. The second shows the value of Keegan and Lahey's approach to the employee, work teams, and entire organizations. The third part is devoted to practice - in it, the authors invite you to try the approach on yourself.

Who is this book for?

For managers and executives who are interested in self-learning in their organizations.

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Lisa Lahey

Robert Keegan

Today's leaders and their teams are often faced with the extremely difficult task of implementing change in an organization. People resist any change - even if they wholeheartedly support it. Research in this area shows that the problem of change is often not a problem of will. The main difficulty is bridging the gap between what we want and what we are really capable of. The authors of this book, who have studied human development at Harvard for over 30 years, show in detail how you can overcome “immunity to change” and lead your company forward.

Published in Russian for the first time.

Robert Keegan, Lisa Lahey

Rejection of change. How to overcome resistance to change and unleash the potential of the organization

Lisa Laskow Lahey

Immunity to Change

How to Overcome it and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization

Scientific editor Evgeny Pustoshkin

Published with permission from Harvard Business Review Press, a division of Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (USA) and Alexander Korzhenevsky Literary Agency (Russia)

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

Published by arrangement with Harvard Business Review Press (USA) via Alexander Korzhenevsky Agency (Russia)

Bernard and Saralee Keegan

To my boys - Bill, Zach and Max Lahey

Preface to the Russian edition

I came across this book in 2012 while studying at Harvard Business School on a Leading Professional Service Firm course. The volume of literature that had to be thoughtfully read in preparation for the course exceeded my wildest ideas about human capabilities. And in this rich flow of knowledge, theories, research, the book by Keegan and Lisa Lascoe became a bright beacon, indicating not only the direction of the necessary changes, but also specific steps - simple, logical, clear. I read it in one breath and very naturally accepted it as a guide to action.

Each of us, at some point in our lives, has felt the reluctance to change - from a slight "hang" to a resistance passionately supported by convincing arguments. Sometimes we notice missed opportunities, and sometimes delay can be fatal. In his book, Keegan gives this example: only one in seven patients is ready to change their lifestyle - stop smoking, move more, change their eating style - on the recommendation of their doctor. Even when the alternative is a quick death. Now that the pace of technological and social change is accelerating exponentially, many companies are behaving like these patients: unable to decide to change, they rush to death. And economic difficulties can hardly serve as a valid excuse, because in the same conditions, other leaders, on the contrary, lead their companies to new heights, markets, solutions. It's all about how their corporate leaders manage to deal with their immunity to change.

This book should be read with a notebook and a pencil, making your own list of criteria, actions and steps that will ultimately allow you to experience life not as a difficult road with obstacles, but as a journey full of meaning, discovery and joy that transforms you and the world around you.

Oksana Morsina,

Managing Partner, RosExpert (http://www.rosexpert.com/)

Foreword

It took us our entire professional life to write this book. It presents a new, but already proven approach to improving the efficiency of people and teams.

Yes, we were on the beaten track. The ideas and techniques described in this book were actively used in the railway network of one of the countries of Europe, in a large transnational financial corporation, in one of the most famous American high-tech corporations. They have been used by the leadership of the National Agency for the Protection of Children's Health, several school districts in the United States and the directors of their institutions, senior partners of one of the leading consulting companies and leaders of one of the fastest growing labor unions in the United States.

But the path was not straight. To be honest, we didn't originally plan to tackle the problem we're now being praised for solving. It is a problem of narrowing the gap between what people intend to do and what they are capable of. 25 years ago, there was little we could do to help those organizations. We understood that our research was worth a lifetime, but we did not know then that this work would allow us to get to know leaders and their teams from public and private companies in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

We started as academic psychologists dealing with the development of mental activity and complexity of thinking in adults. One of us (Kegan) took on the theoretical aspects of our new concept, and the other (Lahey) worked on developing research methods, evaluating their effectiveness, and "tuning". In the 1980s, our work revealed something completely new to us, which aroused the interest of fellow scientists and practitioners around the world. We have proved the possibility of adult development. Many people believe (and there is even scientific evidence for this) that our mind, like our body, “does not grow” after adulthood. But we found that some of our research participants have mastered complex and effective ways of knowing the world.

The new ideas of human growth that we developed were lukewarm at the time, but our long-term research programs (certain parameters were evaluated in the same people over many years) showed that people develop in a certain sequence. At each new level (“plateau”) of thinking, a person overcomes the limitations of the previous level. Further research has shown that each qualitative leap forward enhances the ability not only to see (inner and outer worlds), but also to act more effectively (see Chapter 1 (#gl1) for more details).

But we have found that many, having left adolescence, no longer develop new levels of thinking, and if they move forward in this sense, it is not far. At heart, we have always remained educators (and built our careers not in higher schools of management, but in higher schools of pedagogy), so we wanted to find out if a person can develop the breadth and complexity of his thinking on his own. Or is success here a matter of chance that cannot be controlled? Or people can be helped in self-development? We explored these questions and made a second discovery in the 1990s.

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discovered a phenomenon that they called “immunity to change”, or “aversion to change”. It was until then an inner force hidden from scientists, which actively (and very effectively) keeps from any changes, as it seeks to preserve the perception of the world, which is characteristic of man.

We first introduced readers to the idea of "aversion to change" in the book How Our Communication Can Change the Way We Work, published in 2001. There we introduced the public to a deceptively simple, at first glance, methodology that has been developed over many years, thanks to which people can discover hidden motives and beliefs in themselves that keep them from changing themselves - necessary and desirable (regardless of the goal - "be bolder in relationships with people" or "lose weight").

Readers greeted the book with enthusiasm, because it outlined the results of our work with people (several thousand people a year) specifically in terms of changing “aversion to change” (in chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo) we will give recommendations on this). Many were surprised: “I have never seen such a thing!” or “I read the book for three hours and learned more than in three years of talking with a psychoanalyst!” But to be honest, what people really want is for a new idea to have a powerful effect - and quickly. And we are well aware that there is a big difference between the idea itself and our ability to take active steps to implement it.

We understood that we had created an effective and practical methodology, but so far we have not satisfied the true need of readers (they want not so much to know why someone cannot delegate authority to subordinates or is not ready to criticize superiors, but to learn how to do this) and have not achieved our goals ourselves (be able not only to see the mechanisms of human thinking, but also to help people overcome their weaknesses and shortcomings).

Shortly after the release of our first book, we spoke to a large audience of science and human resources leaders from some of the largest Fortune 500 companies and major international nonprofits. They got acquainted with our ideas at the stage of their development and frankly gave their assessments. We did not repeat what our discovery was. We asked them to test our ideas on themselves under our guidance. It took several hours for everything.

At the end of our workshop, many of the participants expressed similar thoughts, but the head of the vocational training department of a large company summed it up best of all: “I have good news and bad news for everyone. First the good news: I've been working in the field of HR for over 20 years and your methodology is the most effective I've seen so far. As if you conceived a jet engine in the days of propeller aviation. You showed us how to move forward. And now the bad news: you still do not understand what to do with this jet, where to fly it and how to land it.

In many ways, he was right. After the book was published, we learned from letters from some readers that once they managed to take off on our “jet plane”, they even managed to reach their destination. But it turned out that for most people, one idea, even an attractive one, is not enough to make long-term changes in their lives. We still had a lot of work ahead of us. We had to overcome the third threshold, and it took us eight years.

During this period, we realized that helping people improve themselves and achieve change they were not ready for, despite smart plans and decisions, is closely related to helping them develop a new mindset that goes beyond the previous narrow limits. Using our colleague Ronald Heifetz's hypothesis about the difference between "technical" and "adaptive" transformations, we can say that some personal goals (especially those that we should but cannot achieve) require us to become "bigger". We must "adapt" to the goals in order to achieve them.

We concluded that to move from identifying aversion to overcoming it, you need to create an effective “learning platform” with which you can achieve two goals at once. We understood that our method of "diagnosing" clarified the situation. Namely, this is an incentive to increase the complexity of our consciousness (mental structures cease to be a “subject” and become an “object”, they turn from a “master” into a “tool”). The ability to recognize and improve the complexity of thinking, in our opinion, should be a key factor in solving adaptive problems. And the desire of a person for adaptive changes with a competent approach helps to transform thinking.

This book is the result of our work over the past years. And to test the strength of our methodology, you should not ask the question “Does it help me achieve my personal goals in self-improvement?” (e.g., “Am I more daring in communication?” or “Am I better at delegating authority to subordinates?” although, of course, it would be better if the answer was “yes” more often than “no”).

We set ourselves a higher goal. And here another question arises: “Does the new learning platform help increase the complexity of thinking, that is, a change that will reveal a whole range of new abilities in a person, and not allow him to achieve one goal?” If the answer is “yes”, then the benefits of applying an adaptive approach will be many times greater than achieving one specific goal.

By reading the examples and ideas in this book, you will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of our methodology for yourself. If you answer yes to the second, more difficult question, then the main message of this book - people can change - will have a double meaning for you. Yes, people - even adults - can achieve self-improvement in specific areas, even if they have not succeeded in anything before. And yes, people - even adults - can increase the complexity of their thinking, just like at a young age. And in the process, they are able to acquire a deeper, more responsible, and less egocentric understanding of reality.

If you have not yet read our previous books, you can do it. We do not expect you to do this. This is not necessary in order to get the most out of this book. If you have ever made attempts (perhaps unsuccessfully) to change your life or tried to help others change their lives, then this book is for you. If you lead, manage, advise, coach and teach and your concern is the personal improvement of your employees or the effectiveness of your team, then this book is for you too.

If you are familiar with our work, welcome to visit us again! Perhaps when you read the book How Our Ways of Communication Can Change the Way We Work, you wondered, “If you discovered the secret of rejection of change and helped me see my problem, wouldn’t you discover something that would help me solve my problem?” This book is for you too.

If you are interested in human development

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in adulthood, think about the possibilities of significant breakthroughs in improving thinking, if you have read Robert Keegan's books "The Evolving Self" and "Standed" and you are interested in what we have learned, you are also included in our target audience.

Finally, if you know that our book is based on theoretical and research work on the evolution of thought and the meaning of life, and if you were waiting for us to combine them and outline new educational methods and an adaptive approach to change, this book is also for you. .

Introduction

Leaders do not need to be convinced that improvements and transformations in his organization should be the first item on his agenda. And they do not need condolences about how difficult it is to change yourself and others. We all know that change is always hard, but we often don't know why it is and what to do about it. Most of the popular explanations turn out to be weak attempts to answer the question of why important changes are difficult for us. We don't understand how urgent they are? We don't have incentives? We don't know what we need to make a difference? Are these the main obstacles to change? The ones you see in yourself and in those who live and work around you?

A recent study found that if cardiologists warn their at-risk patients that they will die if they don't make lifestyle changes—diet, exercise, and quit smoking—only one in seven can make a big difference in their lives. ! And we are sure that the other six patients want to live, see many more sunrises and sunsets, be glad how their grandchildren are growing, etc. They understand the seriousness and urgency of change. Indeed, in their case, the most powerful stimulus is life. Doctors are convinced that their patients know what they need to do. But they cannot change their lives.

If people are not ready to change even when their lives are at stake, how can leaders at any level in different organizations expect success from transformation (even if employees wholeheartedly support them), when the stakes and possible returns from the corresponding activities are not so high, as in the case of heart patients?

Therefore, you need to understand what hinders change, and what contributes to it.

As with cardiologist patients, the problems with change that today's leaders and their teams face are, for the most part, not willpower issues. We simply cannot bridge the gap between what we sincerely, even passionately, want and what we are truly capable of. Bridging this gap is the main task of psychology in the 21st century.

Three main problems

The discrepancy between our understanding of the need for transformation and change and the lack of awareness of what hinders us is the first of the problems that require deep and comprehensive reflection. If you're like the executives we've worked with in recent years, then you too are probably skeptical about how much a person (including yourself) can change. This brings us to the second problem.

Today's companies have many challenges and many opportunities. They are devoting valuable resources—billions of dollars and an incredible amount of time—to making workers more productive. It is hard to believe that this vast array of methods and methodologies—professional training programs, self-improvement plans, executive retraining programs, performance reports, executive coaching systems, and so on—does not reflect leaders' deep optimism about the prospects for personal change in their workers. Why then do managers spend so much time and money on this?

But whenever we manage to achieve trust in relations with these leaders, we hear (mostly in an informal setting - over a glass of wine or a good dinner) from them: “Friends, let's face the truth. People are generally not inclined to change. Al will always be Al. After 30–35 years, a person does not change. You can count on small corrections in the margins of the complex of human capabilities. But to be honest, in fact, it remains only to make the most of the natural strengths of a person and exploit his weaknesses to his own advantage. Why push yourself to the limit and beat out of an unfortunate worker changes that he is not going to implement?

Alas, the ostentatious optimism expressed in all these efforts to develop employees always masks a deep pessimism about the extent to which people are generally capable of change.

We see these pessimistic moods. And we have heard stories like the one below in different countries and industries.

Our company takes the annual reports of employees seriously. These are not cartoons for you, in which people, entering a conference room, raise their eyes to the sky and wait until the psychological chatter is over. Hearing the report and considerations of the worker heads of different links are very attentive. It takes a lot of money and time to generalize and analyze. Everything is studied very carefully. Sometimes employees cry at meetings. They make sincere promises and make detailed plans for what they will change in their work from what needs to be changed. Each reporter leaves the conference room with the feeling that he had a sincere and deep conversation with the employer and that he had a good time. And then? A year later, we all gather in the hall again, and exactly the same thing happens as a year ago. There is something wrong with this system.

Yes, the system is not working properly. That is why we wrote our book. We have a compelling answer to the question of whether people themselves and the cultures in the organizations they work in can change.

The changes you'll read about here are not "little marginal tweaks". And the proof of their possibility is not based on self-deception and distortions of self-esteem. It relies on evaluations, often anonymous, from the harshest critics: the people who surround you at work and at home. Here are some testimonials from our clients.

Have you helped Nicholas, and can you also help his partners? (one of our clients)

Our entire team is noticing a huge change in Martin. It was a pleasure to work with him. The productivity of our group has improved. Previously, I would never have believed this. (Colleague)

In many years, I had the first real conversation with my mother. (family member)

It is immediately believed that something important is really happening around them.

Our experience of cooperation with the leadership of the school district from a distant city testifies to the same. We have been working with him for several years now. And since it is far from us, we created a team of “change coaches” from local specialists, which joined the program. One day we invited a very promising candidate to join the program at a meeting of the "trainers" working group. She was very experienced

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school organizer. We asked her to sit and listen and feel the nerve of the work the team members were doing with us.

We got carried away with the discussion at the meeting, but our guest had a worried look on her face. Two hours into the meeting, she stood up and silently left the conference room. Her face had a tight expression, as if she was in shock. She did not return to us that day. "Experiment failed." One of us thought so.

A few days later, we contacted one of our team members who happened to meet the woman on the street. She confirmed that the woman was startled. “All my life I have worked with the organizers of school education,” she said. “I have never been to a meeting like this. I have never seen people so frank and so responsibly approached the matter. I haven't heard people come up with ideas that could lead to real change in the school." (You'll soon find out what those discussions are.) Turns out she left because she had another appointment. And she asked how she could connect to the team of "coaches for change."

Within the pages of this book, new ideas and practical methods will be presented for leaders who are interested in self-learning in organizations. It's been about 20 years since Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline, where he first challenged leaders to think about learning organizations, and 25 years after Donald Sean's The Thinking Practitioner, where the author emphasized the need to think in terms of work. Today, all over the world, in all industries, leaders are striving to make their organizations self-learning and force themselves to reflect on their own actions.

But issues of individual and collective learning at work must be taken to the next level if organizations are to meet the demands of the 21st century. Otherwise, we can learn and reflect all we want, but the changes that others hope for and expect from us will not happen. And all because we will learn and think without changing our worldview. And this brings us to the third of the issues raised in the book.

Our colleagues at MIT, Senge and Sean, at the end of the last century spurred many of today's leaders to include learning in organizations as a priority. The scientific base and the set of methods integrated into the concept of a self-learning organization are expanding. But a very important aspect of it has not yet been worked out, which is best seen by people who have been engaged in research in the field of pedagogy for many years. We are talking about insufficient study of issues of adult development.

When Senge and Sean wrote their books, neuroscientists confidently believed that the human brain and mental activity did not change qualitatively after adolescence. But, like other scientists who combine research with practice, we carried out our own developments, which showed a completely different picture. Today, both theorists and practitioners believe that the development of human thinking does not necessarily end in adolescence. But we still need to realize all the consequences of a serious revision of our capabilities.

The lack of understanding of adult development issues in the theory of learning organizations is especially important today. Leaders are increasingly asking and demanding from people to do what they are incapable of doing without sufficient training and level of development of thinking. In the area of "development of leaders", too much emphasis is placed on leaders, and insufficient attention is paid to development issues. Many authors try to identify the most important aspects of leadership and help develop the right qualities. But we ignore the most powerful source of any opportunity - our own abilities (and the abilities of people who work for us), which at any age provide us with victory over our flaws in understanding the meaning of what is happening.

If we do not learn to understand the essence of human development: what it is, what helps it, and what hinders it, then we will not develop leadership skills, but only train some of them. The knowledge gained at the trainings for managers will be more similar to new files and programs running on the basis of an existing operating system. They are useful in their own way, because they give more depth and variety in understanding reality, but their use is limited by the operating system. True development is the transformation of the system, not the expansion of knowledge or skill sets.

If you are a leader at any level, then you advance your plans and formulate your goals. But there are other plans and goals that govern your behavior. And you don't realize it. You are not yet ready to take responsibility for them. And more often than not, these unconscious programs of thinking and behavior hang over you like a sword of Damocles and limit your ability to achieve outstanding results.

If you do not pay as much attention to development as to leadership, then you will limit yourself to only your plans and goals. These are not the goals or plans that unconsciously "lead you." Therefore, your ability to change will be limited.

The ideas and stories in this book offer you a path to development, a qualitative expansion of the mind, and therefore increased productivity. And not by exploiting natural data, but by updating them.

book structure

The book is divided into three parts. The first introduces us to a new perception of change. The second shows the value of the approach to the employee, teams and organizations. In the third, we'll show you how to try out new approaches.

Part I begins with a brief overview of scientific advances over the past 30 years on the development of complex consciousness in adulthood and the implications of this data for work. Chapter 1 provides the scientific and empirical basis for all further ideas and case studies. In Chapter 2, we will talk about the discovery of a phenomenon that is holding us back from much-desired change. We call it "change aversion." In Chapter 3, you will learn from two executives, one in business and one in government, how and why they brought our ideas to their teams and how they benefited.

In Part II, we'll go into detail about change in different organizations and people in situations where they recognize and combat aversion to change. These people work in various fields and strive for self-improvement. In Chapter 4, we describe situations where groups or teams evaluate their resistance to change. In chapters 5 and 6 we will talk about the same situations in individuals. And in Chapter 7, we will touch on the most complex model: when individual members of the group strive to overcome resistance to change, and the whole group tries to increase its effectiveness.

In Part III, we invite you to experience for yourself what constitutes

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the main idea of this book. We will guide you on the path to overcoming your and your team's resistance to change. Chapter 8 shows the elements that enable the process of change. In Chapters 9 and 10, we'll walk you through the steps to diagnosing change aversion and then working to overcome it. Chapter 11 will equip you with tools and techniques to help you fight change resistance in your team or organization. In conclusion, we will discuss seven qualities of leaders that help create favorable conditions in the organization for the development of individual capabilities of employees and the overall capabilities of the team.

You probably wouldn't be reading this book if you didn't understand the importance of being able to improve people's performance, if you didn't hope that there are new reasons to believe in such a possibility, and if you didn't wonder what can be done to make those hopes come true.

We hope that the book will be useful for you in many ways: as food for the mind and heart, as a source of willpower and skills. May it help you get the results you want.

Hidden dynamics in rejection of change

The problem of change: revision

What will be the main focus for the leadership of your organizations in the coming years? We are sure that the ability for self-development is yours personally, your staff and your teams. Everywhere in the world - in the United States, and in Europe, and in China, and in India - human capabilities will become the most important variable in the new century. But leaders who perceive human talent and ability as a fixed resource to be found "outside" put themselves and their organizations at a disadvantage.

And leaders who ask themselves, “What can I do to make my organization the best place in the world to develop human capabilities?” create the conditions for success. They understand that in order for everyone to fulfill their main dream - to take advantage of new opportunities and cope with new challenges - they need to cultivate new skills. Such leaders know what promotes it and what hinders it.

The challenge of change and self-improvement is often misunderstood as a need to better cope with the increasing complexity of the world. By coping, we mean adding new skills to existing ones and expanding the set of responses to external challenges. But we remain the same as we were before we learned to "cope." We just have increased some resources. We have learned new things, but not necessarily taken a step forward in our development. Coping with problems is a valuable skill, but it is no longer enough to meet the needs of change in people.

When we talk about increased complexity, we mean not only the modern world, but also people, bridging the gap between the needs of the world and the capabilities/development of a person or organization. To bridge this gap, there are two ways. The first is to reduce the complexity of the world. The second is to develop our capabilities. The first is unrealistic. The second was considered inaccessible, especially in adulthood.

We have been studying the problems of the development of the complexity of consciousness in adults for many years. Our research will help you better understand yourself and those who work alongside you or for you. You will get a new look at the limits of human possibility, that is, the area to which the attention of tomorrow's successful leaders will be riveted.

Modern views on age and complexity of thinking

The ideas and methods that you will find in this book show the fallacy of modern views on the development of human consciousness throughout life. When we started our work, it was believed that the process of a person's mental development is similar to the process of the physical development of his organism. It was believed that a person stops growing and developing by the age of 20. Most people's physical growth stops in their early 20s. If 30 years ago you asked experimenters to draw a graph, one of the axes of which would reflect the level of a person's ability to "complex thinking", and the other - his age, they would confidently show you something similar to Fig. 1.1: A steeply rising line up to 20 years and a horizontal line beyond. And they would do it with absolute certainty.

Rice. 1.1. The relationship between age and the level of complexity of consciousness: 30 years ago

In the 1980s, we began to report the results of our research, which led to the conclusion that some (though not all) people go through a process of qualitative complication of consciousness already in adulthood. Moreover, the complication in form resembled quantum leaps of consciousness from early childhood to late childhood and from late childhood to adolescence. When we presented our results at serious scientific forums, neurophysiologists sitting nearby greeted our reports with polite contempt. “You can assume that your conclusions come from longitudinal studies,” they said. - But exact science does not allow unproven conclusions. We look at things realistically. At the end of the late adolescence, the brain does not undergo significant changes. Excuse me!” Of course, these "natural scientists" did not deny that older people sometimes show more wisdom and knowledge than young people. But they believed that this was a consequence of the experience, which allowed them to "pull out" more from the unchanged mental abilities, and not in any way a qualitative improvement or complication of the abilities themselves.

And what now, 30 years later? It turned out that everyone was making speculative conclusions, including neurophysiologists who thought they were observing the “immediate reality” of the object under study. Today they have a richer experimental base. And now the brain does not seem to them the same as 30 years ago. They talk about neuroplasticity and recognize the phenomenal ability of the brain to adapt to its environment throughout life.

But what if we were asked to draw the same graph of the level of complexity of consciousness versus age today? Based on 30 years of longitudinal research conducted by us and our colleagues - the result of a rigorous study of the responses of hundreds of people whom we interviewed at intervals of several years - we would draw this graph as in Fig. 1.2.

Rice. 1.2. The relationship between age and the level of complexity of consciousness: a modern view

Now we understand two points.

With a large enough sample, a moderately upward curve can be identified. From the point of view of the general population, the complexity of consciousness tends to increase with age - throughout adult life, at least until old age. So his development does not end at 20 years old.

There are variations within any age group. For example, any of the six people who are 30 years old (darker spots) may be at their own, different stage of development of consciousness. Consciousness

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some 30 year olds may find it more complex than 40 year olds.

If we were to quickly draw a picture of what we have learned about the trajectory of human mental development in adulthood, we would get something similar to Fig. 1.3.

Rice. 1.3. The trajectory of human mental development in adulthood

This graph allows us to draw the following conclusions.

There are distinct levels - a plateau. The boundaries between them are not arbitrary. Each is a separate way of knowing the world.

Development is not continuous: there are periods of stability and change. When a person reaches the next plateau, he remains at this level for a long time (although it is possible to expand his knowledge and competencies). The intervals between transitions to new levels (periods of being on a plateau) lengthen over time. The curve shown on the graph becomes thinner, indicating a decrease in the likelihood of reaching new, higher plateaus. What are the levels of complexity of consciousness in adults? Is it possible to talk about what a person can see or do at a higher level, but not at a lower one? Today we know a lot about these levels. They do not show how smart you are in the usual sense. The complexity of consciousness is not measured by the amount of knowledge or intelligence quotient (IQ). It does not imply the ability to comprehend complex matters like the infinite formulas of a theoretical physicist the size of a school board.

Three plateaus - levels of complexity of human consciousness

We will explore this issue in more detail later, but for now, let's start with a brief look at the three plateaus, or levels of complexity, of adult thinking. Let's study Figure 1.4 and the sidebar. Three semantic systems of consciousness are shown here: socialized, self-authoring and self-transforming mind. Everyone makes sense of the world and acts in their own way. To see how each level manifests itself at work, you need to understand how they perceive the same phenomenon, such as the flow of information.

Rice. 1.4. Three plateaus in the development of adult consciousness

More about the three plateaus of adulthood

socialized mind

Our personality is determined by the expectations of others.

Our personality remains whole through alignment with and loyalty to the group with which it identifies.

Such a sense of self is expressed mainly in relationships either with people, or with ideas and beliefs, or with both.

We are able to detach ourselves from the environment in order to form our internal position, on the basis of which we make judgments, that is, we gain authority for ourselves, allowing us to evaluate external events and make independent decisions.

Our personality maintains its integrity by being attuned to our belief system, ideology or code of conduct and by being able to choose our path, hold our position, set clear boundaries, create and regulate them as we see fit.

Self-transforming mind

We are able to put aside our ideology and personal authority and see their limitations; understand that any system or self-organization is incomplete; show more respect for contradictions; strive to maintain a multitude of worldview systems, instead of adhering to one (one's own), projecting the rest onto other people.

Our personality maintains its integrity through the ability not to confuse it with wholeness or completeness, as well as alignment with the entire dialectic of the process, and not with one of the extreme poles.

The operation of the system is determined by how information flows in the company: how people receive and receive it, to whom it is transferred and how it is treated. Specialists in organizational culture, organizational behavior, and organizational transformation often study this issue based on complex theories about how systems affect people's behavior. But, as a rule, they have a very approximate idea of how important the level of complexity of consciousness is in the study of organizational culture.

socialized mind

This level significantly affects the transmission and reception of information at work. The data that people send outward depends largely on their ideas of what others expect. Classic groupthink studies show that team members often withhold important information when developing a common solution because, as one of them put it (this was revealed in a survey conducted some time after the study), “I believed that this plan had no chance. to success, but our leader really wanted us to support him.”

Some studies were initially conducted in Asian countries. There, the participants who "hold" the information claimed that they sought to "save face" of the executives and not subject them to shame, even to the detriment of the company. The results of the research were presented as typical of the "Asian civilization". And Stanley Milgram's famous study of obedience to authority was originally undertaken to understand the mentality of "good Germans." Milgram tried to determine what allowed a generally decent and unsadistic people to obey orders to exterminate millions of Jews. But in pilot experiments in which the psychologist wanted to test his data collection method before heading to Germany, Milgram was surprised to find similarly “respectable” homes in the US. We think of shame as a characteristic of Asian culture, but studies by Irving Janis and Paul Hart have clearly shown that groupthink is as prominent in Texas and Toronto as it is in Tokyo and Taiwan. Groupthink and obedience to authority are based not so much on the national and cultural affiliation of people as on the level of complexity of consciousness.

The socialized mind significantly affects how a person perceives incoming information. Since maintaining valuable “connections” and a sense of belonging to a circle of significant people is vital to the integrity of the individual, the socialized mind is extremely sensitive to the information received and very susceptible to its influence. Because of this, he often perceives that which goes far beyond the basic, explicit layer of the message. We may pay more attention to subtexts or imaginary "clues", giving them much more importance than the sender of information. Speculation usually surprises and annoys managers, who cannot understand how subordinates or team members could interpret their words so wrongly. But since the receiver's system of signal and noise recognition can be broken, sometimes what he perceives bears little resemblance to what the sender wanted to communicate.

A person at this level of consciousness tells others what they think they need to hear in order to

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optimally fulfill the tasks or mission of the project. He determines (consciously or unconsciously) the direction of his thought on the basis of his own plans, his position, strategy and goals. It is in this context that communication takes place. The developed course of action or plan is brilliant and not so. A person may be talented in attracting others to participate in his plans or not be able to do this. It affects other personality traits as well. But the level of complexity of consciousness strongly affects whether a person orients his information flow in order to, figuratively speaking, drive a car himself (as in the case of a self-authoring mind) or sit in a passenger seat for someone to drive him (socialized mind).

This approach also works when receiving information. We create filters that shape the flow of incoming information. They classify information by priority, highlighting that which a person expects or does not expect, but which is important for his plans, position, status. Filters also discard unnecessary and uninteresting information.

A person whose thinking is at this level is usually perfectly able to concentrate and distinguish between important and urgent in order to effectively spend limited time resources on the correct classification of endless signals that claim to his attention. It is on this basis that a self-authoring mind can be defined. But the same property can be disastrous if the plan created is defective, misses an important component that is discarded by the filter, or the world changes so much that a filter that was effective in the past becomes obsolete.

Self-transforming mind

The self-transforming mind has a filter, but does not "merge" with it. A person is already able to look at him, and not through him. Why? Because he treats any idea, belief and opinion both respectfully and with suspicion. He realizes that no matter how attractive the idea may seem, it certainly has flaws and something is overlooked. the self-transforming mind understands that the idea lives in time, and the world is constantly changing and what is important today may become insignificant tomorrow.

Therefore, in communication, people with such a level of complexity of consciousness not only promote their plans and ideas, but also leave opportunities for their modification or expansion. They may send messages that include requests and requests for information. But they are looking for new information not only within their coordinate system or project (in order to complete their tasks). They also tend to adjust their coordinate system. They are looking for information that will allow them or their team to improve, develop or even change the original idea and add new approaches. Unlike people whose complexity of consciousness is at a socialized level, people with a self-transforming consciousness send signals not to be included in the number of “passengers”, but, unlike people with a self-authoring mind, not only to be allowed to control of the car, but also about how to refine the map or even change direction.

When the self-transforming mind perceives information, it uses the filter for its own benefit, but does not become its hostage. People with this level of mental organization can drive a car when they know they have a good map. But they prioritize information that alerts them to the limitations of their frame of reference or perspective. They appreciate their filter and its ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, but understand that it may not miss something valuable: a thought or idea that no one asked for, an anomalous event, a point of view far from the norm that will turn the project on its head and taken to a higher level.

People whose consciousness is at this level are more likely to pay attention to such information: they are usually given it. Why? Because they are not only attentive to it, but also understand that their behavior can significantly affect the determination of others to contact them with such information. Others are undecided as to whether they should pass on "minor" yet potentially important information. They are sending her because the self-transforming minds made it clear beforehand that they would welcome her.

Complexity of consciousness and productivity

The above description of the three plateaus of the complexity of consciousness, based on one important aspect of the work of the organization - its information flows - reflects the features of each of these levels. These characteristics also determine the value of each of them. Theoretically, each subsequent level is formally “higher” than the previous one: people on it can perform cognitive functions of a lower level, while adding new ones.

But the discussion of the issue of information flows suggests that the formal characteristics of the levels of development are manifested in life and have real consequences for the behavior of a person in an organization and his professional competence. In general, we can say that people with a higher level of complexity of consciousness usually work better.

Can this be considered only a hypothesis, not yet fully substantiated, or has this conclusion been subjected to thorough verification and systematization? There are already a number of studies that link measurements of the complexity of a person's consciousness with independent assessments of his professional competence and effectiveness. We will talk about them in more detail later, but for now we will just try to understand the main trends.

Renowned leadership researcher Keith Eigel assessed the level of complexity of minds of 21 presidents and CEOs of large successful companies, each of which has become an industry leader and has an average annual income of more than $ 5 billion. (He used a 90-minute interview methodology that was developed by us and our colleagues. "Subject-object interviews" described below have been widely used in many countries of the world and in various fields over the past 20 years. They accurately reveal the dynamics of changes in the level of complexity of consciousness in people, as well as development trends within one level.)

Using various tools to measure the performance of managers, Eigel assessed their ability in the following areas.

The ability to question the effectiveness of accepted organizational processes.

The ability to be a source of inspiration for the emergence of a shared vision.

Ability to manage conflicts.

Ability to solve problem situations.

The ability to delegate part of their powers to others.

Ability to promote self-reliance.

The ability to build relationships.

How do we assess the level of complexity of consciousness?

Our tool is the 90-minute interview technique. It was called "Subject-object interview". We chose it because the complexity of the development of consciousness is a derivative of how it distinguishes our thoughts and feelings (that is, it can look

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on them, make them an object of awareness) from the thoughts and feelings that "own us" (that is, guide our actions and the subjects of which we are). Each level of complexity in its own way draws an invisible boundary between what at this level is an object for a person and what is a subject. The higher the level, the more information a person is able to perceive as an object. What he does not see (the subject) occupies an ever smaller volume. The technique is very precise: it helps to reliably identify five transition points within each level of complexity of consciousness.

The survey begins with an offer to use ten key cards, on which keywords are written.

Anxiety, nervousness.

Firm position, conviction.

Depression.

Passion, inspiration.

Loss, separation.

Turn.

Importance.

In the first 15 minutes, we ask the interviewee to make notes on all the cards with the answers to the questions: “Remember the recent situations that caused you anger (nervousness, fear, excitement, etc.), and write down on the card the first thing that comes to mind ". Further, the survey is conducted systematically: the respondent tells us what happened (and caused anger, awareness of success, etc.), and we try to find out why it happened (what that situation meant to him). We have chosen these cues because previous research has shown that they successfully delineate the boundaries within which people construct their perceptions of reality. A trained interviewer can effectively analyze the material in order to understand what the interviewee can currently see in the world around him and what he cannot (the so-called blind spots).

Polls are recorded and processed according to a single methodology. Thousands of such surveys have already been conducted in different countries of the world, the participants of which were people of different ages and different social status. Most of them find these surveys very interesting.

I have argued that Goldratt's approach to overcoming resistance is largely limited to technical challenges—changes that require a new set of skills within an existing way of thinking. And this aspect of improvement – the technical one – occupies one diagonal of the intent-impact matrix, as we have seen. If you have not read the previous post then please do so before reading this article.

Here I want to explore the Immunity to Change approach by Robert Keegan and Lisa Laskau-Lai, which is mainly applied to adaptive challenges—changes that require both a new set of skills and a new way of thinking. And as you might have guessed, this improvement occupies the second diagonal of our intent-impact matrix.

Keegan and Lai work at Harvard University, but not at the School of Business. They are psychologists, or rather, developmental (developmental) psychologists from the Graduate School of Education. What can developmental psychology and education bring to business and organizations? Yes all. Developmental psychologists, in a number of independent studies, have concluded, and tested and measured, that mental efficiency continues to develop in adults throughout life. The only thing that can sometimes stop us in this development is ourselves. And they call it "immunity to change," it helps us protect our deeply held beliefs. Psychologists show us how to open it and how to work in this concept.

Does this approach work? Maybe it's just another damn theory? Prove to us that it's practical! Well, in An Everyone Culture, Keegan and Lai describe how they worked with a large, publicly traded, multinational corporation with $20 billion in annual revenue. They took 4 groups of 150 managers (600 in total), each of whom ran a business unit with a top management team of 8-10 people. In total, they “touched” more than 5,000 employees of the corporation, each of these managers and their direct reports, again in 4 groups with the help of webinars.

And, of course, the obligatory joke: “To be honest, I’m not sure how much better I have become at work, but my wife wants me to thank you for making me a much better husband!”.

Seriously though, work is fine too. A year and a half later, the company calculated from its own internal metrics that these 600 executives and their people contributed $1 billion more in revenue compared to a similarly sized internal "control" group that had not received such training. This is a phenomenal result for American corporations. Now I am sure that many will now immediately say: “Yes, but this is ...”. You know it's an old song - anxiety, objection, rejection - and we're very strong in that, I mean, guilty of it. Also, let's please not forget that Goldratt did a phenomenal job with his "Satellite Program" in 1999. So, perhaps our problem is that we are overly fascinated by the exact sciences. And we forgot that the soft pink stuff between our ears is better at understanding other sciences that are better suited to understanding complex things outside of us.

A little explanation. It didn't just suddenly fall out of the back of a truck. This is Robert Keegan's life's work. If possible, read his much older book, In Over Our Heads: the mental demands of modern life (you absolutely must). Then you will see the consistent development of his idea from book to book. And he did not work in isolation. Keegan and Lai continued the ideas of Piaget and Kohlberg, and there are other essential and complementary branches that merge together. This is, on the one hand, the work of Jane Levinger, Suzanne Cook-Greuter and Bill Torbert, and Clare Graves, Don Beck and Chris Cowen, with another. The ideas of the latter can be traced back to Maslow. And finally, or maybe first, there is the work of Elliott Jaques and Jerry Harvey, which is known to quite a few. Another thing, the legacy of these psychologists testifies: how polar opinions are within their profession, so are our views within our profession. I always say that there might be something fundamental and right about it.

Kegan and Lai clearly did not use any logistical approach in their work. They didn't use Lean, they didn't use Six Sigma, they didn't use Drum Buffer Rope, they didn't use Critical Chain Project Management, they didn't use the Recruitment Model, and they didn't use Logical Thought Processes. So how did they even do it? They only used their Immunity to Change approach, and so their result is all the more remarkable. What if we could combine their psychology with our TOC logistics approaches?

Keegan and Lai use a simple little table exercise in their approach, and I would really like to start with that, but I'm sorry, I decided to start with my matrix. Together, they will make more sense, and it doesn't matter which one works for you, as long as it works.

Keegan and Lai start in the upper left quadrant, a positive future, with one big idea: what we would like to change in our personal lives. It's like making a New Year's wish, which is always at the very top of the list. This is the only aspect that is on the up arrow we previously used for the technical aspects of our problem and our solution. Note that they don't even ask what the problem we are trying to solve is, they just ask what solution we are trying to implement. And if we implement a solution, the story ends there. But we don't do that, do we? What shall we do then? We keep doing things we shouldn't be doing to achieve our stated goal, and we don't do things we know we should be doing to achieve our stated goal. I called them "opposite actions" and here they are in the lower left quadrant - the positive present, because, in fact, for us it is positive.

Now Kegan and Lai are asking, if we are rational (and positive) human beings, why do we do the exact opposite of what we want to do? To answer this question, they move to the upper right quadrant, and they ask what are the rational fears that we should have and can we uncover them if we do what we want to do in the upper left quadrant? Again the horizontal arrows are talking to each other. We have a positive intention, and we know, but usually do not express, the negative consequences that may arise from this. More precisely, due to the fact that we do not express a negative impact in the upper right corner, we stray into clearly wrong actions in the lower left corner, without ourselves knowing why we are doing this. They are opposite, but they are also positive - and that's good. But they don't let us go where we want to - and that's bad. So, we need to write down our rational internal fears that we have in order to:

stop doing what we shouldn't do.
start doing what we have to do.

They call it a "worry box" in their exercise, and they use it to ferret out the underlying positivity. Remember, in NLP, every behavior has a positive intention? Answering questions about fear takes us back to the lower left quadrant. We are back in positive territory again because there we have underlying positive commitments that we are trying to fulfill right now. For every fear we express, we must be able to find an underlying positive belief or commitment that matches it.

Do you see now that our opposite actions are really positive because they are the result of our positive commitments? We just had to dig a little through the mud of our fears to find them. Now I think you will be way ahead of me, these various positive commitments come from one or two or more underlying positive premises (assumptions). Keegan and Lai call them "important assumptions". And that's where we're heading all the time—in the direction of these important assumptions. It is the third object in the lower left quadrant. These assumptions block the way into our consciousness. We don't get there. The fact that we do not understand them, or do not voice them, leads to the fact that we do not do what we want. And they control us.

Immunity to change preserves these deeply held positive assumptions that we use to move forward in life. When the situation (context) changes, but the initial premises do not, we get an adaptive problem.

Let's now look at Keegan and Lai's exercise.

Kegan and Lai are psychologists, so they cheated a little, they reduced 5 objects into 4 positive aspects. And they sent only our negatives to the “dump of fears”.

If you remember the matrix, essentially all the hard work is on the down arrow, which I previously called reaction, is the cause of our problem and a call to our own sense of security. I wanted to mention some of the premises, but that would be unfair. Just check what they do first. And remember, it's not what I think, and it's not what you think, it's what the person doing the exercise thinks. Obviously, we could start with a fairly superficial understanding, but over time, with deliberation, trust, and a few iterations, a deeper and more fundamental understanding will emerge. Again, the title of the book is Immunity to Change: How to Overcome Resistance to Change and Unleash Organizational Potential.

Kegan and Lai suggest that personal results - real changes - can be obtained within 12 weeks. This is a very good time frame, in my opinion. They also state that you should do this first on an individual level in order to internalize the methodology and then on a group problem. If I tell people, "Do it first," they will do it second, but at least you're warned.

These two approaches are related to each other, like a truck hitch or like a handshake icon on a LinkedIn web page. We stopped in the upper right quadrant with unspoken fears. They started with him with their fears expressed. They completely filled the quadrant, which we leave empty, the lower left is the positive present. We will completely fill in the quadrant that they left empty, the lower right is the negative present. We have an up arrow for technical challenge and resistance to change, and they have a down arrow for adaptive challenge and immunity to change. Let's draw this.

We have the toolkits and know-how to change the skill set required for our technical solutions. They have the toolkits and know-how to change the mindset needed for our adaptive challenges.

When we combine two hikes, we get a hitch effect. And even more. Keegan and Lai have found that no matter what level you're at right now, being immune to change will help you miss the mark and fly past the next one. Compared to riding a bicycle, when a technical problem changes into an adaptive one, we have a mechanism that allows us to shift to the next gear to continue our journey - forward and up.

Let me end with two caveats.

First, let's paraphrase Guy Du Plessis from his Guide to Complete Recovery from Addiction: "Trying to understand [immunity to change] objectively, without the subjective point of view accumulated by injunctive practice [Injunctive norms are common expectations of how group members should behave if they want to gain social approval and avoid blame], it's like trying to understand Zen by reading books on Zen without any practice or direct experience. Any Zen master will tell you that this is impossible and that you will definitely make a wrong interpretation. The same goes for any experience, whether it's eating an apple or swimming in the sea; you can never truly understand the feeling of swimming in the sea through reading or soaking in a bath. [Change Immunity] is just "a finger pointing to the moon", not the moon itself. Criticism mostly refers to the finger. If you confuse the map with the territory, you're in trouble."

Running a business has many parallels with addiction to drugs. He also says that you can argue with him (oh my God, how we love to argue), but if you haven't tried drugs, you really can't discuss them. Now I'm not trying to ban any discussion, on the contrary, I want to open it. Moreover, I know that almost every one of us has tried something, and therefore he has the right to argue. But I just want to ask you to argue from your own experience. Real gems can be born from our discussion.

Secondly, I won't start a dice game until I have people's anonymous multiple choice answers about what they think will happen. Only 3 questions but people never get them right. But I have to do this, because in 30 minutes everyone will know for sure: their questionnaire showed that they do not know anything. So I know a lot of people will tell me that immunity to change is obvious and nothing new. And I know that many of us are indeed specialists in these matters. However, Keegan and Lai have provided a mechanism that allows us to get a systematic approach to what some of us may have intuitively felt in the past. But we cannot leave these problems to our intuition, and we must recognize their clear contributions.

This lower left quadrant is important, and if you understand the work of Jerry Harvey, you may understand that you should go there. This is more important than our own personal assumptions, but which also drive our personal assumptions. What we don't really know is what we know. I hope you find value in this and how it complements what we want to do. And I want to end with a quote from Elliot Jacquet:

“We are dealing with the problem of how to get the full commitment of the millions of people who work in the managerial hierarchy and ensure the well-being of our industrial society. And how to achieve two great and necessary social goals: to maximize the effectiveness of these organizations in accordance with the democratic values of our society; and do it in such a way as to give each of their employees the opportunity to satisfy a deep human need - to be able to creatively fulfill, as well as economically well-being from work.

Robert Kegan

Lisa Laskow Lahey

Immunity to Change

How to Overcome it and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization

Scientific editor Evgeny Pustoshkin

Published with permission from Harvard Business Review Press, a division of Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (USA) and Alexander Korzhenevsky Literary Agency (Russia)

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the copyright holders.

Published by arrangement with Harvard Business Review Press (USA) via Alexander Korzhenevsky Agency (Russia)

Bernard and Saralee Keegan

To my boys - Bill, Zach and Max Lahey

Preface to the Russian edition

Foreword

It took us our entire professional life to write this book. It presents a new, but already proven approach to improving the efficiency of people and teams.

But the path was not straight. To be honest, we didn't originally plan to tackle the problem we're now being praised for solving. It's a problem of narrowing the gap between what people intend to do, and for what they are capable. 25 years ago, there was little we could do to help those organizations. We understood that our research was worth a lifetime, but we did not know then that this work would allow us to get to know leaders and their teams from public and private companies in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.

The new ideas of human growth that we developed were lukewarm at the time, but our long-term research programs (certain parameters were evaluated in the same people over many years) showed that people develop in a certain sequence. At each new level (“plateau”) of thinking, a person overcomes the limitations of the previous level. Further studies have shown that each qualitative “jump” forward enhances the abilities not only see(inner and outer world), but also act more efficient (see details).

Previously, we studied the development of thinking from the outside, objectivistically, trying to describe the structure of comprehension of the surrounding reality and trace changes in it. But in the 1990s, not quite consciously yet, we began to move into the inner world of a person in search of the main motive that determines our level of thinking. And then we discovered a phenomenon that we called "immunity to change", or "rejection of change." It was until then an inner force hidden from scientists, which actively (and very effectively) keeps from any changes, as it seeks to preserve the perception of the world, which is characteristic of man.

We first introduced readers to the idea of “no tolerance for change” in How Our Communication Can Change the Way We Work, published in 2001. There we introduced the public to a deceptively simple, at first glance, methodology that has been developed over many years, thanks to which people can discover hidden motives and beliefs in themselves that keep them from changing themselves - necessary and desirable (regardless of the goal - "be bolder in relationships with people" or "lose weight").

Managers do not need to be convinced that organizational change should be the first item on the agenda. However, we all know how difficult it is to make any changes. The MIF publishing house has published the book "Rejection of Change" by Harvard professors, which will help managers overcome "immunity to change" and take the company to a new level of development. Shall we start?

What is "immunity to change"?

Organizations around the world are spending billions of dollars and a lot of time implementing various assessment techniques that can help staff improve their performance. People boldly listen to criticism addressed to them and recommendations about what they need to change in themselves. They often agree and commit to make adjustments. They may even start putting a lot of emotional energy into their commitments. But then they usually realize that little has changed.

All too often, pledges of loyalty to one's obligations become like decisions we make on New Year's Eve. After all, they are also sincere. When we make promises to ourselves in anticipation of the beginning of the year, we consider those qualities of ourselves that we want to get rid of as bad. And those that we want to develop seem good to us. But until we understand that our commitments that give rise to actions we do not like are extremely effective, we will not be able to correctly formulate the problem.

In other words, a person is not able to achieve his goals, retaining the old way of thinking.

Immunity to change, as the phrase itself tells us, is our self-defense system. And by changing the approach, we can overcome any difficulty.

Why is it human not to change?

Professor Ronald Heifetz distinguishes between two types of change challenges: "technical" and "adaptive".

Mastering the technique of removing an appendicitis or landing an airplane with the nose landing gear not ejected can be attributed to solving technical problems, but the result is extremely important for a patient lying on an operating table, or fearful passengers of an airplane thinking about an imminent plane crash.

But most of the changes that need to be made today or tomorrow require more than “building” new “technical” skills into the old way of thinking. These are "adaptive" difficulties, and their solution is possible only with a change in the way of thinking and a transition to a higher level of development of consciousness.

Heifetz believes that the main mistake leaders make when purely technical means are trying to respond to adaptive challenges. We are not always able to make the desired changes if we define our problem as technical, although in fact we are faced with an adaptive difficulty.

There is only one conclusion: we need to look for adaptive (non-technical) ways to enable ourselves and others to cope with the corresponding challenges.

Stock up on time

Transformation takes time. There is no express solution. The fact is that we are in a world of cultivating the human personality, and not an engineering approach to man. We don't just flip a switch. We are talking about the evolution of consciousness and its complexity.

However, accepting the fact that the development of consciousness takes time does not mean just sitting and waiting. Much depends on our actions. Create conditions for safe change.

Focus on employee development

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco gets painted all the time. As soon as one work is completed, new ones begin immediately. Maintaining the bridge's golden glow is a top priority for the city. What does your organization want to focus on on an ongoing basis?

The continuous development of employees at work is best in the interests of the organization and the personal interests of each employee. The organization cannot provide a better "encouragement" than investing in satisfying the hunger of self-development - the desire to look at the root (internal and external world), work more productively, be able to do more.

When we overcome our resistance to change, we stop doing unnecessary trading: our immune system frees us from worries, instead giving the illusion that we are not capable of much. But we are capable!