Switch - Chip Heath [102]
During the Alpha free-space meetings, the reformers began to develop a language for talking about the advantages of the reform. For instance, during one meeting, the chief resident deconstructed the “continuity of care” argument made by change resisters:
It is important to take personal responsibility. But I think you can preserve this personal commitment without having one person there all the time. Some people are old school and say, “I’m going to do it myself.” For me, it is the team that is going to take care of everything. Each of us takes personal responsibility to make sure that patient care is the best it can be, but that doesn’t mean doing it all yourself as long as all of the pieces fit together. [emphasis added]
This resident was developing what Kellogg calls an “oppositional identity.” Every culture, whether national or organizational, is shaped powerfully by its language. Across the reform-minded Alpha teams, a new language was being incubated that reflected a new set of values. Old school versus new school. Trusting your team versus doing it all yourself. Being efficient versus living in the hospital.
At Alpha, the reformers had the space and the language needed to brew a new identity. At Beta, they didn’t. The lessons are clear. If you want to change the culture of your organization, you’ve got to get the reformers together. They need a free space. They need time to coordinate outside the gaze of the resisters.
Counterintuitively, you’ve got to let your organization have an identity conflict. For a time, at least, you’ve got to permit an “us versus them” struggle to take place. We know this violates our “we’re all on the same team,” Kumbaya-ish instincts. It’s not desirable, but it’s necessary. Think of it as organizational molting.
To encourage this molting in your culture, think of all the tools we’ve built up in the Path section. First, you need to tweak the environment to provide a free space for discussion. At Alpha, the rotational teams had a private place to meet, and that created a free space where the new identity could grow. Do your own “reformers” have a private place where they can meet and coordinate?
Second, you should build good habits. Recall the idea of action triggers—visualizing when and where you are going to do something important. The interns at Alpha were essentially setting action triggers. They thought about what they would say, and how they would act, when 9 p.m. came and the signout process was triggered. They mentally rehearsed how they would respond if an argument flared up with the night resident. Have members of your team rehearsed how they’ll react when they meet resistance from your organization’s “old guard”?
Finally, you should rally the herd. At Alpha, the leaders helped the reformers find one another, and the reformers began to create a language—as we saw in the examples of the designated driver and Fataki—that allowed them to talk about their values with others. As a leader, you can help prod them to create this language, to find ways to articulate what is different and better about the change you seek.
9.
We started the Path section by discussing the Fundamental Attribution Error—the tendency to attribute behavior to people’s character rather than to their environments. Look again at the teaching-hospital example. At Alpha, 42 percent of superiors supported the change; at Beta, 66 percent supported it. Almost all of us would have put our money on Beta. Not many of us, when confronted with that data, would have immediately thought, Yes, but what about the situational forces?
At the two hospitals, individual character competed with situational forces, and situational forces won. This brings us back full circle to the food drive study, where a jerk with clear instructions was more charitable than a saint with generic instructions. The line between saints and jerks wasn’t as clear as we might have thought.