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How to Affect Behavior Change in an Organization
By chris | July 31, 2007
“Have we misdiagnosed our problems again?” That’s the question I was asking myself recently while I was at a conference about casting the vision for change in a faith-based nonprofit organization. All the points of the presentation were valid. We all were nodding our heads in agreement. But I kept getting this sinking feeling that I have heard this all before in other meetings I have been in, yet the change I felt was coming after all the new thinking and posturing for something new didn’t happen. Why do we talk about changing our organizations, yet often fail to experience the change we desire so much? I think the problem lies in the lack of a clear planning model for changing behavior.
We have many excellent strategies for changing beliefs (affective). We have nearly unlimited strategies for changing understanding (cognitive), but we lack direction in how to organize to affect behavioral change. Because we have the ability to talk about change, but have no model for changing behavior, I feel we are usually missing the diagnosis and making bad prescriptions for how to evoke change. Despite our new understandings and heightened emotions, we are not working on a real solution that will improve organizational health.
I have seen organizations accurately measure their situations and realize the real source of their problems. I have seen them build teams to “implement” change. I have seen such teams working in utter blissful harmony together. Yet, all the teaming, all the problem identification leads to nothing when people don’t change their actions. Why don’t they change? I feel we just don’t know how to help them do it.
Three reasons we don’t know how to change behavior in our organizations.
1. We measure the symptoms of our problems and not the source of our problems
Too many organizations can’t see the forest for the trees. They have problems, they know, and as soon as they amass a list of a few of the problems they have, they set to work on solving them. But if you want to experience change, you need to find out what you have been doing to get the problems you have. Your list of problems could all have one main behavioral source. Or there could be more. You need to get to the “epidemiology” of the problems, and not just make a list of the symptoms of your illness. As they say, “diagnosis without examination is malpractice”.
If you want to evoke change you need to understand not only what you are doing wrong, but also what you are doing right. You need to know where and why what is working, works. In short, you need a total picture of the health status of your organization. Then you will be able to identify the systems that are not functioning properly. And spot the ones that are working well that might also help resolve the problem.
If you went to the doctor with a sickness and all he did was give you some pills, without conducting an examination and giving you a diagnosis of what causing the problem, wouldn’t you have your doubts that he knew what he was doing? Could your doctor be a quack?
2. We look too much at changing our structures to evoke change instead of focusing on our behaviors
I have lost count of how many reorganization processes I have been through. It seems in faith-based nonprofit work, when we really want to shake things up, we “re-org”. I am not opposed to making positive structural changes in an organization. But the problem is the potential for what I call “reorganization addiction”. It’s a lot more fun to reorganize and change the rules, than it is to take a long hard look at what you are doing wrong and make changes in behavior. You can create a lot of dust moving desks and ripping down walls. But when all the dirt settles, you will still be the same organization with the same sickness if you don’t adopt healthier behaviors.
Imagine if your doctor told you that if you didn’t adopt a new behavior of eating healthier foods you would die. You would only have yourself to blame for your death if all you did with his diagnosis was remodel your kitchen. The only way to solve your problem would be to change your eating behaviors. “But that’s no fun. Look at the great new tile in the breakfast nook!”
3. We create “products” that are meant to change behavior, but fail to see the behaviors are the really products and the “products” we create are really promotional channels.
Programs don’t solve problems, new behaviors do. If you determine you have a problem, don’t assume you can fix it by developing a new process, product or program. Creating new products is also a diversion from behavior change much like making changes in the organization is. First you have the fun of creating the new product. Then you have the process of selling it to people.
You could spend time thinking about your problems. You could reorganize to create new products (or programs) to evoke change. You can work very hard and get everyone to “buy-in” to the new process/program/product. But when the dust settles again, you will still have the same health issues you had when you started if you don’t get people acting differently.
Keeping with the illustration above, if your doctor told you needed to start eating healthier food, and all you did was write a cook book, you would only have yourself to blame for your demise.
We may have all kinds of new activities and see all kinds of changes taking place in our organizations, but until we address the real behavior changes we need to make, we will never recover from what is ailing us.
Instead of creating new organizational structures and developing new products, we need to think of what are the behaviors we need happening to make healthy changes and we need to treat those as the “product”. Everything we do, then, from structure to the tools we make should be directed at getting people to adopt the new behaviors. Products, processes and programs are all channels we use to communicate and facilitate the changed behaviors.
Topics: Doing the Ministry |