The Change Capability That Compounds

You can mandate change, or you can cultivate it. Only one of these approaches compounds.

My vegetable garden here in Vermont is full of shamrocks. Technically they are weeds. I leave them in, because I am Irish and because I’m delighted to see them.

A mechanically minded gardener would pull them. To a mechanic, anything that was not in the plan is a defect. Every part has a job, and whatever does not match the spec gets removed. Of course there is no room for a shamrock in a machine.

Most organizations lead change like mechanics. And it is quietly costing them the one capability that would make every change after this one easier.

The mechanic isn’t wrong.

He follows his process, and he follows it well, it’s the standard playbook. The same communication plan, the same training checklist, the same steps, no matter what is growing in this particular ground. People become interchangeable parts. Resistance becomes a defect to remove.

There is nothing careless in it. It is efficient and rigorous. The trouble is that it treats a living organization as though it were a machine. An organization is cultivated and grown, not built.

This is not a failure of the leaders running it, or of the mechanic. It is a mismatch. A spec is the right tool for a world that holds still.

The world does not hold still anymore. A while back I wrote that change used to come in waves, and now it is the water. Uncertainty is no longer an event you brace for. It is the condition you operate in.

A spec is built for waves. Water is different. You cannot spec your way through water.

A spec assumes a world that holds still. Adaptability is for a world that does not. You cannot mandate it into being. You have to grow it.

So, what is the capability that compounds?

It is adaptability. The standing ability to take on change and come out steadier rather than spent, and to get better at it each time. In a garden, it is not the fabric you lay for one planting. It is the soil.

Good soil is built over seasons. You feed it and turn it. Each year it holds more, resists more on its own, and makes every planting after it easier.

Last week I wrote about the readiness work before a change, getting the bed ready for what you are about to plant. That is where it starts, but it is one season. Good soil does not build itself, and neither does adaptability. You train it, on purpose, through practice repeated until it holds on its own. Researchers call that point automaticity, the point where a behavior runs without a conscious decision. We call these habits.

“A behavior becomes automatic after an average of 66 days of daily repetition, and for some people as long as 254.” - Lally et al., European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010.

Run like a mechanic, change draws down the same reservoir of energy, and people come out of each one more spent. Cultivated, change does the reverse. It generates capacity: the room to think clearly, to collaborate, to try something new, to do the work well rather than just get through it. A team that comes through change well comes out with more energy and capacity, not less. That is what cultivating adaptability generates.

Run well, change does not drain a team. It builds its capacity for the next one.

Why keep the shamrock?

Adaptability is also knowing what to keep. The mechanic pulls everything that was not in the plan and out comes the workaround a team invented that quietly works, the resistance that was really a signal worth hearing.

A gardener reads what is growing before she pulls it. She can tell a shamrock from a weed that chokes. No playbook teaches that. A spec can tell you what to remove, but not what is worth keeping.

Do you mandate change, or cultivate it?

This is where method becomes leadership. A mechanic mandates. He issues the spec, sets the date, enforces the rollout, and gets compliance, on this project, and nothing that carries to the next.

A leader who cultivates works the other way. She sets the conditions, tends what grows, keeps the shamrock, and lets the capability build. It is slower to start, and it is the only one of the two approaches that compounds.

You cannot mandate adaptability into a team any more than you can order a garden to grow. So, choose your hard. Mandate change and start from bare ground every time or cultivate it and let each season make the next one easier.

Before your next initiative, ask one question. Are you mandating change for a world that holds still, or cultivating it for one that keeps moving? Look honestly at your last three changes. They have already answered for you.

Sources

Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. doi.org