Is change hard?

(This post was originally written pre-COVID, but the basic principles hold)

We spend our work lives talking about strategic change, and at least once a week, someone says something to us like “change is hard” or “people really hate change” or “change takes a long time.”  This is such a common statement in our culture that we take it as a truth.

But is it true?

When we’re teaching about change, one of the things we often have people do is to close their eyes and slowly imagine all of the changes that have taken place for them in different situations:  in their professions since they finished school… in their neighbourhood since their moved in… in parenting since they were children… in the clothes they wear in the past few years…in the weather over the past month…  in their bodies since they hit puberty.  That last one usually gets a laugh, but people open their eyes and get it – we’re changing all the time, every day.  Adjusting to change is part of how we orient the world.  Change itself isn’t hard – we’re adaptive creatures.  What is hard is having changes imposed on us that we don’t see the point of.

One of my favourite illustrations of this is the constant barrage of new technologies around how we wash and dry our hands in public washrooms.  In the past decade, there has been a flood of diverse ways to turn on taps, make paper towels magically appear, trigger a blast of hot hair in a dryer, flush the toilet.  Every time I walk into a new place, there is a brief moment where I have to figure out how to do the thing that I have been doing mindlessly for 50 years. How many times have you noticed people waving their hands fruitlessly under a paper towel dispenser that actually requires you to turn a knob?

Why do we get so irritated with the endless changes to basic handwashing?  First, we didn’t ask for them, and they surprise us.  We just want to go about something we do countless times in our lifetimes without thinking about it – and suddenly our flow grinds to a halt. 

Second, technological innovation in bathroom hygiene can’t seem to find common ground – sometimes you have to wave, sometimes you don’t, none of the sensors look the same – we can’t just “settle” on what we need to do, so it’s always disruptive. And half the time it doesn’t work. 

And finally – and this is the most important one – for the most part, this change is not necessary. Washing our hands with soap and drying them on paper towels is a pretty effective technology.  The dozens of options are irritating and interrupt our flow.  No one wants to stop and think about how to dry their hands in the bathroom.

The lesson in all of this?  Change isn’t hard and it doesn’t take long.  In one generation, we’ve changed countless societal “norms” – it’s no longer acceptable to spank children, drive drunk, smoke in public buildings or casually utter racial slurs.  And unlike when I was a kid in the 1970s, most people know where their children are when they leave the house.  These are profound changes, and they happened relatively effortlessly.  Because people moved toward something better.

What IS hard is change that lands on you disruptively with no apparent reason.

We are embedded in a constantly changing, adapting environment.  In your workplace, give some thought to which of those changes are actually moving toward a generative future – and which ones are the motion-activated splashy taps.  Try to minimize those and focus on the work that truly moves you forward.   Then change becomes natural adaptation and learning, not a disruptive irritant.