How do you get people to change their thinking? If executives rise to a senior position, then their thinking must have been very good to get them there. So why is there any need for change?How do you get people to change their thinking? If executives rise to a senior position, then their thinking must have been very good to get them there. So why is there any need for change?
We use the words 'manage' and 'management'. The image that 'management' brings to my mind is that of a coachman seeking to manage a team of powerful horses. The purpose of the management is to get the horses to pull together, so that the carriage heads in the chosen direction.
On the way to a more senior position, it is often enough for the executive to be good at doing what should be done and at solving the problems that arise from time to time. There is no need for change, creativity or improvement. Indeed, these are sometimes seen as high-risk. If everyone is doing something different then how do you know what they are doing?
It is believed that competence and problem-solving are enough at lower levels. I do not agree with this, but I can understand it. At more senior level the need for creative and strategic thinking increases. The thinking that is needed at senior level is not the thinking that brought people to this stage.
COMPETENCE
In today's business world competence is no longer enough. If your hope of survival is based on the belief that you will continue to be more competent than your competitors, then you might be in trouble. There is nothing you can do to prevent your competitors from also becoming competent. Water is essential for soup. Without water there is no soup. But soup is more than water. Competence is essential for business, but business is more than competence. Soup has to have a taste value and possibly a nourishment value. Business also has to deliver value.
In today's business world competence, information and state-of-the-art technology are all becoming commodities available to everyone. What now matters is the ability to design and deliver value. It is for these reasons that a change in thinking may now be necessary. This change does not involve giving up the traditional thinking, which was, and continues to be, excellent. It is a matter of adding the thinking that is concerned with creativity and the design of value.
The front left wheel of a car is excellent. But no matter how excellent this wheel may be, there is still a need for the other wheels. No matter how excellent our skills of analysis and judgment, there is still the need for the skill of design and creative thinking. So how do you get people to change their thinking?
EXAMPLE AND MODELLING
One method of change is to provide a constant example of the new thinking that is needed. So you, yourself, model the new thinking on all occasions: at meetings and even in conversations. This method can indeed work, but it requires a great deal of contact between the parties. It also requires the person doing the modelling to be very good at it. There now arises a dilemma. If the person is not good at modelling the new thinking, then no learning takes place. At the same time, if the person is very good, then others will be content to leave such thinking to that person and not to bother with it. In theory modelling may work, but in practice it rarely does.
EXHORTATION
Exhortation means that you point in the desired direction and then urge people to move in that direction. You can exhort people to be creative by giving creativity a high priority and by requiring examples of creativity. You can exhort people to climb a mountain, but unless you actually give them climbing techniques they will not get very far. Exhortation works well if it is in the framework of current thinking. Exhorting executives to cut costs may indeed work. But if the direction requires new thinking and a new framework, then exhortation will not work at all.
ADMONISHPerhaps the least effective method of change is to scold and blame. You can scold people for not being creative, but this is very unlikely to make them more creative.
We often feel that it is enough to point out errors and inadequacies, and then behaviour will be satisfactory.
We believe that it is enough to point out errors in thinking in order to get excellent thinking. If you admonished a car driver to avoid all errors in driving, then that person could avoid all errors by leaving the car in the garage. There would be no errors - but there would not be much progress either.
You can never admonish people into a new form of behaviour. You can remove deficiencies from an existing mode of behaviour, but that does not produce a new form of behaviour.
COURSES AND SEMINARS
These can be very effective ways of changing behaviour. The 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles were a great success. These games rescued the Olympic movement, which was on the verge of collapse. When the organiser of the games, Peter Ueberroth, was interviewed in the Washington Post, he attributed his success to his use of lateral thinking to generate new ideas and to change concepts.
I wrote to ask where he had learned my methods of lateral thinking. He reminded me that he had been my host for a 90-minute talk to the Young Presidents' Organisation in 1975, So, in his case, a 90-minute seminar nine years before had had a powerful effect.
Seminars are excellent. But people have to want to go to a seminar in the first place. Seminars can also be expensive, and some people feel they cannot afford the time away from work.
FIRST STEP
For all the above reasons my new book is intended as a 'change agent'. You give a copy of the book to all your more senior executives and your board members. You ask them to comment on it. The book is all about the need to add the thinking needed for the design of values to our judgment and recognition thinking.
Our traditional thinking is based on the recognition of standard situations and then the provision of the standard response. We use analysis to break down complex situations into parts we can recognise.
As I noted in Thinking Managers, this thinking is very similar to that of a doctor in his surgery. A child is brought in with a rash. The doctor has to 'diagnose' the condition. What standard situation is this? Once the doctor has made the diagnosis of measles, say, then that doctor knows the probable course of the illness, the possible complications and the standard treatment. In education, 100% is along this model and about 95% of all subsequent behaviour. There is nothing wrong with this thinking, which is effective and powerful.
Unfortunately, recognising standard situations does not design new ones. So we need to add something more to the constructive, design and creative thinking that is so needed for progress. The new book is called Why So Stupid?: How the human race has never really learned to think. The book is only available from Blackhall Publishers in Ireland.
Telephone: (353) 1 278 50
e-mail: blackhall[@]eirecom.net
