Most things in nature follow a path of least resistance. Nature conserves energy and the least energy is required when not battling inertia, friction, obstruction, or gravity.
People aren’t much different. In organizations, the inertia, friction, and gravity comes from supervisors, organization policies investment decisions, or the culture/rewards that are set up in the organization.
People leading change efforts often fall back on the cliché that change is hard or that people don’t like it.
That doesn’t have to be the case. How hard would it be for people to adopt a change to lower taxes? What about an increase in the speed limit on interstates?
Change isn’t hard. When people say they don’t like change, what they are really saying is that they don’t like to commit a lot of their personal resources (time, energy, and commitment) to something that isn’t going to provide much in return or is going to be a pain.
Sometimes organization’s make change hard because they make easier to not change.
As a leader, your job is to make it easier for your people to change than it is for them not to change. This means that we have to strip away the real and perceived risks associated with the change. We have to make the status quo an uncomfortable place to be.
For example, I was once working with a group of physicians. Their leadership wanted the doctors to start using a voice recognition system when dictating patient notes. The current process was to dictate notes and have them manually transcribed. That was quite costly.
Many of the doctors, after a bit of prodding, started using the system. However, there were a few hold outs.
The on-going transcription cost was becoming a burden on the group.
So, why weren’t some doctors changing? The answer was simple. It was easier not to change. Transcribed records were turned around in a day just as the doctors wanted. The transcription costs were assumed by the department. The doctors were getting exactly what they wanted. Switching to the new system involved time (to learn it), some risk (of admitting they didn’t know how to use it), and some general fear of uncertainty.
For those doctors, maintaining the status quo was the path of least resistance. Ironically, that path was created by the leaders of the group who were trying to champion the change. They thought that by letting people transition slowly they’d get greater buy-in.
Sometimes that works. In this case, it just gave people a longer time to resist the change.
We discussed some options. One option was to give the doctors free access to the voice recognition tool but would require them to pay (either personally or from their specific departmental funds) for transcription services. We also discussed changing the agreement with the transcription company to a 2-3 day turnaround as opposed to the nearly instant turnaround from the new system.
In either case, the status quo would now have a cost. The path of least resistance was to use the new system. Of course, this assumes that learning and using the new system was easy, accessible and working when the doctors needed it.
What is easier for people in your organization – following the change that you are driving or continuing to do things the “old way”?
If the change requires more effort, energy, and risk than does the status quo, it won’t happen.
