In this video i'm going to be talking about the resistance we face during Agile Transformation
and one way to fix it !
Hey friends ! Welcome back to my channel and if you're new here my name is Vibhor, I am an Agile
Leadership and Transformation Coach based out of this beautiful city of Toronto and on this channel
we explore the strategies and tools that help us help our organizations reap the benefits of being
Agile. But before we get started would you like to have some coffee with me? Go grab one, I'm waiting
Let's get started. So if you're anything like me or have been in the agile space for some time
then you must have heard this phrase {CHANGE IS HARD} multiple times. So much so that people, who want to resist
Agile use it as a plug to support their cause all the time. Now I heard people saying this so
many times, that I had to develop a strategy to neutralize the negative effects it was having
against my Agile Transformation efforts. Whenever someone comes to me and says,
"Change Is Hard", I ask them to show me their cell phones. And unless they show me a Nokia 3110,
I have a strong case to prove how easily they have been adapting to change all this time. The reality
is that we all have experienced tremendous amount of change in our lifetimes and as human beings
it's our tendency to evolve and adapt. So when we say, "Change Is Hard", we are actually denying
that we are inherently good at managing change. Now I'm pretty sure that I have managed to convince
most of you to believe that "change is easy", but what if I now say that change in some situations
appears to be really hard. Let me explain. In 1998 Roy Baumeister and his team hired a few students
to conduct an experiment. When these students came to the lab they were welcomed with this
amazing smell. Someone has just baked some fresh chocolate chip cookies. And in front of them
there was a table, and on the table there were two bowls. One of the bowls as you might
imagine was full of chocolate chip cookies and the other bowl, was full of radishes.
The students were divided into two groups. Group A, was asked to eat away the cookies and leave
the radishes alone, and group B was asked to eat radishes and leave the cookies alone. While these
radish eaters were eating their radishes away, the researchers tried to induce temptations to see if,
you know, the radish eaters would sneak a cookie. But since this was an experiment,
the radish eaters didn't fall in the trap, and used their willpower to keep eating radishes.
And meanwhile as you can imagine, the cookie eaters didn't experience the same kind of temptation to
binge on radishes. The study appeared to be over. On their way out the two groups were asked to solve
a logic puzzle. They were unaware of the fact that the puzzle was designed to be impossible.
The researchers simply wanted to see how long the two groups persist in trying to solve the
puzzle. And what they found was surprising. They found that cookie eaters went on
for an average of 19 minutes, whereas the radish eaters lasted an average of just 8 minutes.
Why the difference? And the answer may surprise you even more!
What they found was that radish eaters ran out of their self-control. It turned out that they used
up all of the willpower while trying to resist the temptation to eat the chocolate chip cookies. They
didn't have enough energy left to help them keep up with another frustrating task. With the help of
this study Roy Baumeister claimed that every time we as Human Beings apply self-control, we lose
ENERGY. Now here's why all of this matters in the scenario of Agile Transformation.
Agile Transformation is a form of change. And in almost every change situation, what we are doing is
we are substituting new unfamiliar behaviors for behaviors that are older and more comfortable.
And this requires a significant amount of self-control. Now employees face change in
their organization all the time. Some of it is presented to them as fate-accompli.
Meaning you have to do it or risk your job. These forced changes suck the energy out of the employees.
And then when they face changes that are optional, like Agile Transformation,
they have little or no energy left to play along! Agile Transformation comes across as
exhausting! This exhaustion makes them to think of Agile Transformation as a threat. Threat to
the rest of the energy they've got left. Now that we know, why we as Agile Coaches face
resistance, during Agile Transformation, let's have a look at how to go about fixing this situation.
How to make people welcome change? But first I need my energy. I'm run out of coffee. I have
to go grab one, so give me like one second. Let's have a look at how we usually go about doing it.
When we want our people to embrace new ways of working the first thing we want to do is
to educate them. We want to bring them all together and make them go through a boring
lengthy powerpoint presentation. The problem though is that knowledge rarely leads to change!
According to most MBA schools you can induce change using a three-stage model. You present
careful analysis, and that causes people to change their thinking, which leads to behaviour change.
John Kotter, the organizational change expert from Harvard, says that in his experience that's
almost never the way it happens. In his experience, it happens in a different three stage process.
First, people see something, which makes them to feel something, and then that feeling, gives them
the necessary fuel or energy to change. In other words change is driven by emotions and feelings.
So if you want your colleagues at work to change, you have got to put feelings first.
You've got to start thinking about what you can get them to feel!
For example you can bring them face to face with customers who are under-served and have them feel
some empathy. Or you can confront them with some of your competitor's products that are actually better
than yours and get a little competitive spark going. Doesn't matter how you go about doing it,
the next time you hear someone complaining about change, think that that person has still to SEE
something, that can spark a FEELING, for a need to change. So there you have it. If you like this
idea, then give this video a thumbs up. If you didn't like this idea or have anything to add
then please provide your feedback in the comments. Thank you so much, for watching. Do check out the
link to the study that i've mentioned in this video in the description, if you're on Youtube
or in the comments if you are on LinkedIn. And hopefully I'll see you in the next video.