Movement Matters

We’ve all been there. Standing. Waiting. Wondering. It sucks, doesn’t it!

In this bus queue we were wondering why the full bus wasn’t leaving and why four more buses were standing empty.

In traffic and supermarkets we change to the lanes that seem to be moving quickest.

Psychologists call it Progress Theory - If we are not making progress, we feel frustrated. If we are making progress, we feel better.

It matters in organisations too. In their 2011 book “The Progress Principle” Kramer and Amabile said, “Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work. And the more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run.”

Leaders have an important role to play in this sense of progress. If you are stuck on the hamster wheel of an ever growing to-do list, there’s a good chance you are missing a deep well of engagement and motivation for your team (and yourself).

If you lead in a ‘For Purpose” organisation, the progress principle is an even more powerful lever.

How are you using it?

Epiphany

I love a good Aha moment. I had one last week when I was preparing to talk to a group of leaders. I was angry and ruminating on an interaction where the outcome had put me under unexpected pressure. I had to pick up more of a job than I was supposed to because the other person didn’t follow through at their end. It left me scrambling to keep the balls in the air.

So there I am, preparing to talk to leaders about dealing with pressure. Under pressure myself, and not dealing with it particularly well. I was playing the interactions with the other person over and over in my head, doing the things we humans do when we feel slighted. Pointing the finger of blame. Stewing rather than acting. Feeling wronged. Enrolling others in the drama. Burning precious time and emotional energy. Going nowhere.

The epiphany came as I thought about my session with leaders. I was talking about “Grinding the Gorge” where survival groups walk up and down trying to establish exactly where they are, rather than making forward progress. I’d never thought about rumination as an example of Grinding the Gorge but it is. AHA! I used the story in my presentation. My advice in situations like that is to value Direction over Detail. The details feel important, don’t they? We want to be right. We want acknowledgement of the slight and the impact. Usually there's a lot more going on and it’s less intentional than we think it is.

For me Valuing Direction took a mental shift from the detail (he said, she said) to the short term action needed and the bigger picture of what I wanted the relationship with the other person to be. I focussed my time, effort and communication there. Progress is being made. Next time I find myself grinding the gorge called rumination, I reckon I’ll exit much more quickly.

Where could your leadership benefit from a shift to Direction over Detail?

Hidden Resistance

Over the years of being involved in many organisational change initiatives, there has always been resistance. Some of the reasons for resistance are obvious and easily addressed. Some are more subtle, hidden away in places we don’t often consider. In my experience, locating and addressing hidden resistance has a much greater effect on progressing change, than adding further force.

One hidden source of resistance is that the status quo serves some or all of the people in some way. It doesn't necessarily need to be positive - the old adage about the devil you know exists for a reason! Asking and answering the question “How does the current situation serve me/us/them?” will give some insight. Here are a few examples I have encountered.

• Ian had been one of the major people involved in creating the current system. He was quick to admit that it no longer served the organisation and it was time to move on, but he also had an emotional attachment to it. It was hard to let it go without feeling that his original work was somehow substandard. He also felt that people pushing the change were not listening to his depth of experience. How could you address this with Ian?

• Lorraine knew her team and their circumstances very well. She manually ran an excellent roster of many people and never missed a beat. As the organisation grew, rostering was being brought into a central function, which gave capacity to better manage overtime hours, use people’s skills and availability across a larger spread of the organisation's work and allow staff to easily see their rosters and request changes. Lorraine was concerned about losing control of the excellent relationships she had with her staff and clients. She was also concerned about learning a computer based system, and was resolutely sticking to her paper based one, slowing the whole project down. How could you assist Lorainne with that situation?

• The whole of A Shift had a reputation for quickly solving the problems that the current system caused (usually many a day). They relished their reputation and the edgy excitement of solving problems ‘on the fly’. An A Shift supervisor said, "the new system will mean less problems, and our work immediately becomes more mundane and boring.” A Shift was significantly blocking progress on the new system and as a result getting even more problems to solve. How would you work with A Shift?

In each of these situations, once the reasons for resistance were heard, understood and addressed, the people involved became avid supporters of the changes being made. Trying to force them toward the new systems would have resulted in them being casualties of change, or the resistance being driven more underground.