Switch - Chip Heath [48]
The ambiguity in being a “good accountant” dissolved when Attila met the social service workers. When he saw how hard they were working, and the raucous conditions they were working in, he couldn’t help but empathize with them, and that feeling of empathy gave the lie to his positive illusions. I thought being a good accountant was about rigor, but now I see that it’s also about service. Having been forced to experience the inadequacy of his old approach, he became a zealot for the new one: Team, you better get those paychecks out ASAP—people are waiting on us!
That may not be a heartwarming tale, but it’s a big switch. Attila the Accountant was a hard case. Healy and Sitkin managed to break through his prickly exterior and make him feel something. And once he felt something, he changed. That outcome should give all of us hope that we can reach the Attilas in our own life (Attila the Dad, Attila the Boss, or Attila the Teenager).
7.
It’s emotion that motivates the Elephant. In fighting for change, we’ve got to find the feeling. But which feeling? Anger, hope, dismay, enthusiasm, fear, happiness, surprise?
HopeLab built a video game for teenagers with cancer that gave them a feeling of control and power. Jon Stegner’s Glove Shrine shocked the execs and gave them a determination to fix the matter. The Microsoft usability lab made developers feel empathy for their customers. Will connecting with any old feeling do?
We often hear that people change only when a crisis compels them to, which implies that we need to create a sense of fear or anxiety or doom. Two professors at Harvard Business School, writing about organizational change, say that change is hard because people are reluctant to alter habits that have been successful in the past. “In the absence of a dire threat, employees will keep doing what they’ve always done.” As a result, the professors emphasize the importance of crisis: “Turnaround leaders must convince people that the organization is truly on its deathbed—or, at the very least, that radical changes are required if the organization is to survive and thrive.” In other words, if necessary, we need to create a crisis to convince people they’re facing a catastrophe and have no choice but to move.
Similar beliefs about the importance of crisis once prevailed among therapists, most of whom believed that alcoholics or drug addicts couldn’t be helped until they hit rock bottom. Back in the 1980s, at a professional conference, the therapist Ruth Maxwell gave a presentation suggesting to fellow therapists that the now-familiar technique of family “intervention” could be used to convince addicts to enter a treatment program even if they hadn’t yet hit rock bottom. In her book Breakthrough, Maxwell wrote she was “nearly booed out of the room…. Coming from backgrounds deeply steeped in traditional psychiatric wisdom, they firmly believe that people cannot be treated unless they are motivated for treatment.” And being “motivated” required a rock-bottom crisis.
Speaking of the perceived need for crisis, let’s talk about the “burning platform,” a familiar phrase in the organizational change literature. It refers to a horrific accident that happened in 1988 on the Piper Alpha oil platform in the North Sea. A gas leak triggered an explosion that ripped the rig in two. As a reporter wrote, “Those who survived had a nightmarish choice: to jump as far as 150 ft. down into a fiery sea or face certain death on the disintegrating rig.” Andy Mochan, a superintendent on the rig, said, “It was fry or jump, so I jumped.” He was eventually saved by a rescue mission involving NATO and the Royal Air Force.
Out of this human tragedy has emerged a rather ridiculous business cliché. When executives