What the Individual Model of Change Misses

CONTEXT

"The stakeholder ADKAR survey results look good," I reported during the project’s go/no-go meeting.

"Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, and Ability are above 80%, and we have a post go-live reinforcement plan in place. So, it’s a ‘go’ from me."

Years ago, in one of my first roles as a Change Manager, I supported a new technology initiative that changed how the organization’s sales team quoted and sold products.

The organization adopted the Prosci methodology, utilizing an ADKAR survey to measure progress throughout the initiative.

Throughout the project, feedback from the ADKAR surveys steadily improved, bolstering my confidence in the green light for go-live.

However, within a month of go-live, the new system was abandoned due to massive pushback from the sales team.

Despite strong ADKAR results from most individuals, it was a change management disaster.

How could this have happened?

THE BIG IDEA

Organizations don’t change one person at a time.

They change through emergence - when networks form among people sharing a common cause, purpose, and vision for change.

Organizations are complex adaptive systems (CAS).

A CAS is a dynamic network of interconnected people, systems, and technology, characterized by self-organization, nonlinearity, and the capacity to adapt and evolve in response to its internal and external environment.

Crucially, a CAS exhibits emergent behaviour - the whole demonstrates properties and behaviours not apparent from the individual parts alone.

"Organizations don’t change one person at a time"

Emergent behaviour is one of the “freaky” attributes of a CAS.

This means that despite the behaviour observed at the individual level, when all individuals come together and interact, the outcomes of those interactions don’t always align with what we observe individually.

Here’s a simple example: Imagine that I am trying to understand the culture of your organization.

With your permission, I set up a camera at your workstation to observe your daily work patterns over an extended period – say one year.

During that time, I observe your daily work habits and patterns and determine that you are a dedicated and conscientious employee.

But can I now extrapolate and describe your organization’s culture based on my assessment of you as an individual?

Absolutely not.

Culture is the emergent behaviour of an organization, formed through interactions and responses to both external and internal stimuli.

It's the "way things are done around here" and may not necessarily reflect the behaviour displayed by a single individual.

The takeaway is that in a CAS, no linear cause-and-effect relationship can be predetermined between actions and system responses.

"A complex adaptive system exhibits emergent behaviour - the whole demonstrates properties and behaviours not apparent from the individual parts alone"

Emergent behaviour is what occurred in my opening story.

Despite strong individual support for the project, my focus on driving ADKAR for individual people overlooked the emergent behaviour that arises as result of the complexity and interconnectedness of the system.

Emergent behaviours and outcomes can only be understood in retrospect.

Reflecting, I now understand that other elements within the CAS, like organizational culture, lack of psychological safety, and competitive dynamics, influenced the system’s behaviour and the change’s acceptance.

LESSONS FOR MODERN CHANGE MANAGEMENT

In the 21st century, change managers must recognize that in complex systems, outcomes are often emergent rather than predictable.

This means that we should shift our focus to creating the conditions where positive change can emerge naturally in the system, rather than focusing solely on the individual.

Here are three things you can do right now:

1) Leverage emergence

Because change outcomes result from emergent behaviour beyond the individual, create opportunities for people to connect and share ideas about change.

Be it through communities of practice, Lean Coffee dialogue, or by establishing cross-functional teams of early adopters, the ability of people to form networks is key to leveraging emergence.

2) Provide the vision for change and let the direction emerge

Because the behaviour of a CAS is unpredictable, it does little good to impose top-down detailed plans.

Instead, communicate the overall destination and vision and then enable the networks to self-organize and adapt the strategy as time goes by.

One example from my own practice is to co-create the strategy with the Strategic Change Canvas and then empower and enable teams to pull change interventions when they are ready using Kanban boards.

3) Create feedback loops

Use feedback loops to transfer the reaction of the system to continuously adapt the course of change.

In a CAS, there are no right answers, but patterns emerge by conducting regular experiments.

Try something, observe how the system reacts, and then pause, pivot, or pursue the approach based on what you are seeing.

One tangible way to put this into action is by creating your Minimum Viable Change Process.

It's time to recognize the limitations of the individual model of change that grew to popularity in the 20th century.

In the 21st century, complexity is the singular concept for change agents to accept, understand, and learn to manage.