What a terrific forum. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the exchange between two change experts!

Peter’s poster is a great reminder that change agents take on an extraordinary task–and they need proper “care and feeding” to sustain themselves in that role. Humor among practitioners is a great antidote during challenging assignments. I liken it to a therapist seeing a therapist. Change agent, heal thyself! Thanks for sharing such an uplifting interview.

This was fantastic! I so prefer this approach over a typical blog – I felt closer to the speakers, I heard and absorbed more, and was not as easily distracted by other things while I listened. I strongly agree with Peter’s discussion of control and change and practice that in my work. And I thoroughly appreciated hearing Daryl’s clarification of the burning platform concept, which has been abused for years.

Thank you and please do more of these!
Kathy

I too really enjoyed the interchange. I have followed Daryl’s work since being trained in his approach in Ernst and Young’s Change Management practice in 1996. I look forward to exploring Peter’s work as well.

Daryl I cannot recall if you said this or is my or someone else’s perhaps extension of the Burning Platform story, but when I have given speeches or seminars on strategic change (so my work has only focused on the big changes and also include firms who need to improve around innovation and growth), I have said something like “…. how can grown adults come to continuously enjoy moving to an uncertain future rather than staying with the status quo”. When teams of executives start putting this into play for the first time, they can experience disorientation, sometimes profound.

But what I have found that as they “get good at it” the disorientation turns to a thirst for that feeling. They come to enjoy looking every week for “disconfirming evidence” that will shock mental models on a regular basis. I do not want to bore any reader with how I came to adapt how I help but here is a question for Daryl and Peter:

In my experience, there are relatively few top management teams and the extended body of “opinion leaders” in their firms who can take this on. Have I just been referred to one group by another like minded group (so my practice is small) and think the universe is small or do you two find most grown adults can learn the art and science of change if given the chance?

Daryl please keep up the great work.

Bill,
Good questions have multiple implications and yours certainly fits the criteria—thanks for posing it.

Peter did a great job of addressing one aspect of your question so I’ll just add my concurrence to his response.

A related but different slant on your inquiry surfaces the distinction between “familiarity” and “comfort” with change. In my work, I stress the importance of becoming “accustom to” discontinuous environments rather than “feeling good about” them. As practitioners of organizational change, I believe our goal for clients should be to increase their effectiveness at execution, not their enjoyment of the process. Shareholders/stakeholders aren’t usually interested in whether management/employees like the changes they are implementing—they are concerned about whether the intended outcomes will be realized. That’s not to suggest there is anything wrong if people learn to be more at ease with a certain level of ambiguity but as Peter pointed out, hopefully that just sets the stage for advancing to the next level of uncertainty where anxiety and apprehension once again becomes prominent.

A second perspective on your question that comes to mind for me is the fact that exposure to change does not always translate into becoming more effective OR comfortable with it. Unfortunately, not everyone learns from his/her experience. Some clients have the same experience over and over instead of gaining knowledge and skill each time they cycle in the change process. When this happens, its usually because they are trapped in their behavior and mindset patterns to the point that they can’t move beyond their own dysfunction and therefore repeatedly fall into the same pitfalls (though in different ways each time so it has the appearance of varied circumstances when actually it’s the same dynamics unfolding). The key for us as professional change facilitators is to maintain vigilance on client learning and not assume that their exposure to new expectorations always converts to heightened proficiency.