Last month I announced that later this year (around August) I will be open to work directly with individuals and organizations on their change initiatives and that my next few blog posts would be sharing about this journey. I then went on to write about what industry information says about the failure rate of change initiatives and the costs associated with initiatives that don’t achieve the desired results.

This month I am tackling the question, “If change initiatives don’t seem to be going great, why don’t we change how we ‘do’ change?” While there are a number of reasons, I am highlighting two in this post.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. As author Anais Nin said, “we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. When we have an idea in our mind of how change is supposed to take place it can be difficult to even consider trying something different.

Certainty Effect

The Certainty Effect is when people focus more on their perceptions of certainty rather than the actual probable value.

I want to acknowledge that change, including examining our beliefs about change and considering “doing” change differently than we are familiar with, can be hard and uncomfortable. However, as a leader I once worked for once said, if we agree that there’s a more effective way to do something, we can end the sentence right there and work towards making the more effective way a reality. We don’t need to add, “But here are the reasons why we can’t pursue that now, why we need to continue doing things the way that we are used to”.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If change initiatives aren’t going well, we need to do something differently.

If change initiatives aren’t going well, we need to do something differently.

Closing thoughts

I want to hear from you. Why to do think we don’t change how we “do” change even when change initiatives don’t seem to be going great?

Please post your thoughts and comments below. Let’s help each other become the best change management practitioners and enthusiasts we can be!

Feel free to reach out! My contact information is in the Contact section of my blog. I would love to listen and learn about your change management needs and explore how I can be of help.

Thank you for reading. Until next time, take care and keep up the good work!

Mike