REPLY Society Strategy Development (SD7087)

[SDMAIL Jack Harich]

Posted by  Jack Harich <jack at thwink2.org>


SDMAIL Wehrenberg, Stephen wrote:
> I've been researching the issue of "change management" for some time, 
> and have an evolving theory that plays to the challenge Peter poses. 

Some nice thoughts here. Ironic that you've used the word "frame." What 
you are suggesting seems to build on something I just mentioned in 
another post: Lakoof's framing approach. See the last paragraph at 
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/projects/strategic/simple_framing 
which says:

"To avoid negating the opposition's frame and thus activating it, do the 
following: start with your ideal case of the issue given. Pick frames in 
which your ideal case is positively valued. The contrast will attribute 
the negatively valued opposite quality to the opposition as a nightmare 
case."

In your post, the worst case is the framing you don't want, and the 
vision to achieve is the framing you do want.


> Of course in all my reading of the literature of sustainability, we 
> usually see the worst case presented first, then as an afterthought 
> suggest that if we act, the worst case need not obtain.  Perhaps we 
> have been doing it backwards all along.  
Starting with a positive vision is a frequent tactic of successful 
leaders. Indeed the definition of leader versus manager hinges on vision 
versus control.

It could be that what you suggest is a psychological approach to change 
resistance at the agent level, when in fact what's needed is an approach 
at the system level. This is not nearly as easy to speculate about 
solutions on because it requires a hefty amount of analysis first. But 
that's what we system dynamics aficionados excel at.

Still, very interesting ideas. Thanks!

> Perhaps this suggests that we need to describe a desirable future 
> state first, along the many dimensions that we usually see raised as 
> objections (it will kill the economy; everyone will be out of work; 
> the costs of carbon mitigation are prohibitive; let the market solve 
> the problem; etc.).  If I had all the time in the world, I would do 
> something to identify key stakeholder groups (decision makers, 
> influencers), figure out what their "stakes" are, and then craft a 
> story that improves their lot while solving the problem of 
> sustainability.  Once the story is firmly imbedded in the culture, one 
> could begin to decompose that future state (What would have to happen 
> for that condition to exist?  And what would have to happen before 
> that?  !
>
>  And before that?  And that means that the next thing we should do -- 
> right  now -- is _______?) into action steps. 
> The key is the collective commitment to the image of the future 
> state--the pre-filled picture frame.    
This would depend on the root cause of the particular problem being solved.

For the sustainability problem, continued solution failure for over 30 
years is evidence of high systemic change resistance. Collective 
commitment is probably not a way to solve the change resistance part of 
the problem. It would instead be a symptom that we have solved it.

Regarding "If I had all the time in the world, I would do something to 
identify key stakeholder groups (decision makers, influencers), figure 
out what their 'stakes' are, and then craft a story that improves their 
lot while solving the problem of sustainability."

This has been tried. Read Maurice Strong's "Where on Earth Are We Going" 
which covers the history of the early environmental movement and the 
birth of so called sustainable development, from the perspective of one 
of the key problem solvers and institution managers (UNEP's first 
director, Secretary General of the Stockholm Conference and the first 
Earth Summit). The level of wheeling and dealing among powerful 
stakeholders at the international level is so jaw dropping I had to read 
some long passages twice. Even though problem solvers like Strong were 
brilliant and dedicated enough to try for most of their careers, this 
solution approach failed.

Why? Well, this is a situation in which there is nothing the less 
dominant agents can offer the dominant agent to change his behavior from 
unsustainable to sustainable. The less dominant agents are people, NGOs 
and governments. The dominant agent is the modern for-profit 
corporation. If you doubt this is true, here's one small bit of recent 
proof: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/business/02trade.html The 
article says:

"Opposition from corporate interests, including oil, gas and power 
companies, prompted the Bush administration to opt out of the Kyoto 
Protocol, a treaty that called on developed countries to limit their 
emissions."

This is but one example of how the corporate life form behaves, after it 
was courted for decades by other stakeholders to behave "reasonably."

The first part of your statement takes off in a productive direction: "I 
would do something to identify key stakeholder groups." I really like that.

Now what might happen if you then identified which stakeholder groups 
are dominant, why they are dominant, and then resolved that structurally 
so that the modified system was one that wanted to aggressively solve 
the problem? One way to do this is existing agent redesign and/or the 
introduction of new agents. There are other possible ways, such as the 
example of the Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace. In this 
example, a strategy that has long allowed the dominant agent/special 
interest to exploit the political system no longer works, once the high 
leverage point is pushed on and the root cause of systemic change 
resistance is resolved.



Thanks, Steve, for such provocative thoughts,

SDMAIL peter Luttik wrote:
> I feel challenged by the decomposition.   My associations around 
> change resistance have to do with deepening our understanding of 
> choice and awareness, a field that is only just now becoming the 
> subject of scientific inquiry.   What happens during a paradigm shift 
> in the brain, how do we start to think differently and accept new 
> structures.  
Peter,

A delightful post. Sorry I didn't reply sooner. I've been dealing with a 
difficult analysis that has preoccupied my feeble mind. Plus I wanted to 
give this some thought and complete reading a related paper.


The above and the messages of the last few days deal mostly with 
"psychological" change resistance. This is useful but limiting, and is 
not where the emphasis and real power of the original use of the term 
"change resistance" lies.

Here's a pertinent quote from "Challenging 'Resistance to Change' ", by 
Dent and Goldberg, 1999, Journal of Applied Behavior Science, V35, No1, 
page 29:

"The notion of 'resistance to change' is credited to Kurt Lewin. His 
conceptualization of the phrase, however, is very different from today's 
usage. Lewin evolved his concept based on the person as a complex energy 
field in which all behavior could be conceived of as a change in some 
state of a field. For Lewin, resistance to change could occur, but that 
resistance could be anywhere in the system. As Kotter (1995) found, it 
is possible for the resistance to be sited within the individual, but it 
is much more likely to be found elsewhere in the system."

That last sentence is a pointer to where our explorations are likely to 
be more productive.

Surveying the popular change resistance literature, Dent summarizes: 
"Moreover, they all treat resistance to change as a psychological 
concept - resistance or support of change is seen as within the 
individual." The paper contains several insights I plan to ponder. See:
http://jab.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/1/25

I read this paper for the first time this week. It validates one of the 
deepest findings of them all in human system theory: the tendency for 
most people, even experienced analysts and academics, to fall into the 
fundamental attribution error trap most of the time. Quoting from 
Sterman, Business Dynamics, page 28:

"A fundamental principle of system dynamics states that the structure of 
the system gives rise to its behavior. However, people have a strong 
tendency to attribute the behavior of others to dispositional rather 
than situational factors, that is, to character and especially character 
flaws rather than the system in which these people are acting. The 
tendency to blame the person rather than the system is so strong 
psychologists call it the ‘fundamental attribution error.’

“In complex systems different people placed in the same structure tend 
to behave in similar ways. When we attribute behavior to personality we 
lose sight of how the structure of the system shaped our choices. The 
attribution of behavior to individuals and special circumstances rather 
than system structure diverts our attention from the high leverage 
points where redesigning the system or governing policy can have 
significant, sustained, beneficial effects on performance. When we 
attribute behavior to people rather than system structure, the focus of 
management becomes scapegoating and blame rather than design of 
organizations in which ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.”

It's not hard to realize that seeing change resistance as mainly a 
psychological problem (people's quirks, motivations, awareness, fears, 
mental models, habits, etc) is a case of the fundamental attribution 
error. It's an easy error to make. I've done it myself for years at a 
time. In the past, when I based a line of analysis on people and 
psychology, I found I could not go deeper than conventional wisdom. It 
was only when I finally applied the theory behind system dynamics,with 
attention to avoiding the fundamental attribution error, that I was able 
to go further.

As Frost said, "... And that has made all the difference."

For example, consider the work of George Lakoff. Lakoff is trying to 
help change US public opinion from a conservative to a progressive norm. 
He and everyone else who's tried that has encountered considerable 
change resistance. See:
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/projects/strategic/simple_framing
for a quick intro to framing, the heart of his technique.

Now ask yourself, is his approach of framing dealing with the problem at 
a psychological or a system level? Does proper framing help resolve the 
root cause of the phenomenal rise of neoconservatism in the US since the 
early 1970s? The answers, I think, say a lot about Lakoff's probability 
of success. Similar comments can be made about innumerable social 
problem efforts.


All this is why I use the term "systemic change resistance," with 
"change resistance" as a shorter synonym. My apologies for not using the 
full term in my June 15 post, which should have said:

"Now suppose we decompose that one big problem into three smaller 
subproblems:

A. How to overcome *systemic* change resistance
B. How to achieve proper coupling
C. How to avoid excessive model drift"

Note the generic nature of the decomposition. The longer statement of A is:

A. How to overcome systemic change resistance. This is refusal to adopt 
workable solutions and move away from the status quo. Once systemic 
change resistance is overcome, the system will "want" to move to the 
goal state. This is a key principle.


> Maybe we should start focusing on why the structures have been working 
> so well for so long - a history of social evolution.   And seek to 
> understand why change resistance is actually often a good thing - what 
> its function is. 

A lovely, productive suggestion.

Among other things, this would lead to study of the self-evolving (aka 
self-managing or self-organizing) aspect of social institutions, where 
change for the better is evolved in, change for the worse dies out, and 
everything else remains stable (change resistant). This can occur due to 
the ponderously slow and chaotic "trial and error" of traditional social 
system evolution, or it can occur much faster as the result of social 
system engineering. The latter is seldom done, due to the immaturity of 
our understanding of complex social systems. But I'd like to think it's 
possible and will be the norm someday.

That day may come sooner than we think, if we can set some good 
strategic goals for the Society.

Thanks Peter,

Jack
Posted by  Jack Harich <jack at thwink2.org>
posting date  Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:09:10 -0400