Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
Steven Pressfield

Coming to terms with the very ‘resistance’ I have been studying and writing about for the last few years: it is all about the same thing.  It is all about me, myself and I. And that’s bad news for my ego.

Chameleon Law

Earlier I have mentioned the 1944 unfinished novel Mount Analogue by René Daumal. It describes the travel of a company of eight, who set sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, a solid, a geographical place that “cannot not exist.”

The story of Mount Analogue is about making something happen that all people around you say is impossible and ridiculous.  In this novel about the expedition to a mythical mountain that reaches from earth to heaven, Daumal mentions the chameleon law, which he describes as the inner resonance to influences nearest at hand (“la résonance aux plus proches affimations” if you happen to speak French). As the protagonist of this tale is in the vulnerable starting phase of this expedition, he discovers how he is prone to social pressure and how difficult it is to commit to something before knowing how.

Amygdala

Mount Analogue is about inner doubts and how they prevent us from seeing the other 99% of the possibilities that are at hand in each situation. With rational thinking and conventional ‘common sense’ we easily fall prey to the chameleon law. Scratch off the surface of the chameleon and you will find Fear driving its actions.

The chameleon law as it was coined in 1944 by Daumal didn’t go mainstream until Daniel Goleman – more than 50 years later – published Emotional Intelligence.

All of a sudden the reptile brain – also known as the amygdala – went mainstream. The amygdala  plays a key part in our fight-flight responses to unpleasant sights, sensations, or smells. A great part of our basic instincts such as anger and anxiety are emotions activated by the amygdala.

Lizard Brain

But it is only until recently that the functioning of this reptile part of our brain has been translated in terms of organizational change.

In his latest book Linchpin Seth Godin refers to the chameleon law as the voice in the back of our head telling us to back off, be careful, go slow, compromise. He calls it the lizard brain. It is writer’s block and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn’t stay on the same page long enough to get something out the door.

He uncovers the lizard brain as the motor of mediocrity and the main responsible for late launches, middle of the road products and procrastination. It is the force that causes you to fit in instead of standing out.

Redefining Resistance

Godin got the inspiration for the lizard brain from Steven Pressfield – who refers to it as “the resistance”. Hereby Pressfield radically redefines the term resistance by taking it from a general condition that can easily be diagnosed in other people to the identification of a force we all have to struggle with.

In his book The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
, Pressfield states: “Resistance seems to come from outside of ourselves. We locate it in our spouses, jobs, bosses, kids.” But in truth, as he continues: “Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.”

The Moral for Organizational Change

Organizational change projects are mostly about creating a situation that does not yet exist. A situation, a project or any other expedition is “talked into existence”. With every word you speak, a seed is planted that can give birth to a new reality. Karl Weick refers to this as the process of Enactment to denote that certain phenomena (such as this crazy expedition, or your own project for that matter!) are created by being talked about.

Slowly but surely – if you are persistent enough – your ideas translate to words, your words translate to actions and our actions result into tangible outcomes.

The lizard-type of resistance is the biggest enemy during organizational change efforts, because you are shaping the path for a future that has no gravity in the present.

As you can see from the drawing, the classic way of managing resistance will only get you half way. The last part of the change curve is about fighting the chameleon law from taking over.

Turning Pro

You have to be crazy enough and stubborn enough to endeavor your objectives against all odds of the chameleon law.

It is the very process of setting one foot in front of another and then: keep on climbing. Steven Pressfield calls this turning pro: “The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist”

An organizational change project is a mountaineering expedition of the inner mind as much as it is about delivering a project according to a certain methodology. It is as much an organizational process (Managing resistance as we know it) as it is an inner struggle for fueling our own commitment to an expedition with an un-rational (i.e. ‘rationally ‘unreachable’) objective (Managing resistance inside yourself).

But the hardest part of the battle is inside our own heads. It’s the ability to pursue a dream.

A lot of R words with a particular significance on this blog. In a reaction on last week’s post I was requested to define resistance more precisely. Well, I tend to adopt the definition of resistance the way it is described by Karl Weick, that is:

Resistance is the emotion that occurs when our expectations of ‘the way things are’ are interrupted. Two words are important in this definition:
A – Emotion: the essence of resistance is that it creates an emotion. That means: not logical, not rational and most of all: not predictable.
B – Expectation: resistance does not only occur when things change, but when our expectations are interrupted, regardless of whether that makes rational sense.

As one of the commenters on LinkedIn put it:

"Resistance is an indirect expression of fears of loss of control and vulnerability. It REQUIRES "peeling the onion" to uncover the roots of the affective reaction. Rather than being a "bad" thing, I have found that resistance is more often than not a signpost indicating a potential problem or set of problems that if left unattended could derail any initiative."

Another commenter simplified the definition (I like that a lot!) in a way that negative connotations are almost gone:

"It’s often seen as a negative, however, it turns the light on to areas that really need attention. Just like the voice of our GPS saying, "recalculating" "

Yet another commenter continued:

"We struggle to find a place to put ‘resistance’, so that is doesn’t interfere with the ‘work’ or the outcomes. Seems to me that when we stop fighting it and see it for what it is (without judgment) we may understand better how to use it as a tool more effectively." - Embracing resistance (like the statue in picture above)

And that is indeed the whole point: whether or not we categorize a certain behavior such or so; the difference is in the response we give. And the response can be one of Resentment, Regret, Rescue OR…. RESPECT. The whole point is that we choose our responses to the world.

Finally: thank you to all commenters on this blog and on Linkedin for fueling this discussion!

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” -  Edmund Hillary

In the 1944 unfinished novel Mount Analogue, René Daumal describes the travel of a company of eight, who set sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, a solid, a geographical place that “cannot not exist.”

The protagonist of the book is convinced by a certain Father Sogol to undertake this “crazy” expedition. Father Sogol is a figure who likes to invert cause and effect (and is therefore called the inverse of the Greek “Logos” – representing ‘rationality’ and logical thinking).

“A crazy expedition”

The story of Mount Analogue is about making something happen that all people around you say is impossible and ridiculous.  In this novel about the expedition to a mythical mountain that reaches from earth to heaven, Daumal mentions the chameleon law, which he describes as the inner resonance to influences nearest at hand (“la résonance aux plus proches affimations” if you happen to speak French). As the protagonist of this tale is in the vulnerable starting phase of this expedition, he discovers how he is prone to peer pressure and how difficult it is to commit to something before knowing how.

Father Sogol had really convinced me, and while he was talking to me, I was prepared to follow him in his crazy expedition. But as I neared home, where I would again find all my old habits, I imagined my colleagues at the office, the writers I knew, and my best friends listening to an account of the conversation I had just had. I could imagine their sarcasm, their skepticism, and their pity.

I began to suspect myself of naiveté and credulity, so much so that when I tried to tell my wife about meeting Father Sogol, I caught myself using expressions like “a funny old fellow,” “an unfrocked monk,” “a slightly daffy inventor,” “a crazy idea.” After all that I was stupefied to hear her say at the end of my story: “Well, he’s right. I’m going to start packing my truck tonight. For there are not two of you. There are already three of us!”
“So you take this all seriously?”
“This is the first serious idea I’ve come across in my life.”

And the force of the chameleon law is so great that I came back to the thought that Father Sogol’s enterprise was, after all, entirely reasonable.

The Tipping Point

Now what could possibly be the relevance of this chameleon law for us as organizational change managers? Mount Analogue is about inner doubts and how this chameleon law rocks us asleep and prevents us from seeing the other 99% of the possibilities that are at hand in each situation. With rational thinking and conventional ‘common sense’ we easily fall prey to the chameleon law.

However, organizational change projects are mostly about creating a situation that does not yet exist. A situation, a project or any other expedition is “talked into existence”. With every word you speak about it, a seed is planted that can give birth to a new reality. Karl Weick refers to this as the process of Enactment to denote that certain phenomena (such as this crazy expedition, or your own ambitious project for that matter!) are created by being talked about. Slowly but surely – if we are persistent enough – our ideas translate to words, our words translate to actions and our actions result into tangible outcomes.

The chameleon law is the biggest enemy during organizational change efforts, because you are shaping the path for a future that has no gravity in the present. As Arthur Schopenhauer is often quoted: ‘Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.
In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.’

Broken Windows

This is exemplified by the broken windows theory. Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Scientists in the field of criminology found that disorder invites even more disorder and that a small deviation from the norm can set into motion a cascade of vandalism and criminality. Litter encourages more litter – another way of saying: resonance to the influences nearest at hand.

Malcolm Gladwell was the first to bring the broken window theory to our attention when he described it as paramount in reaching a Tipping Point (an idea which he first published in 1996 as an article in The New Yorker and which he later published in a book with the same title).  As Gladwell notes: “Why was the Transit Authority so intent on removing graffiti from every car and cracking down on the people who leaped over turnstiles without paying? Because those two trivial problems were thought to be tipping points-broken windows-that invited far more serious crimes“.

So we need to beware of all the broken windows symptoms of cynism and indifference and instantly fix every broken window. This is the intense and step-by-step work of creating a new culture.

Committing without knowing how

However, preventing the chameleon law from taking over goes a little deeper than paying attention to practical details. One has to be crazy enough and stubborn enough to endeavor your objectives against all odds. The Mount Analogue expedition reveals the insight that any expedition or organizational change project is a mountaineering expedition of the inner mind and intrinsic motivation, as much as it is about delivering a project according to a certain methodology. The tipping point is as much an external and societal process as it is an inner struggle for fueling our own commitment to an expedition with an un-rational (i.e. rationally ‘unreachable’) objective. It’s the ability to pursue a dream.

Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action.

You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again… So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully. There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know. . .

Daumal, who was apparently one of the most gifted literary figures in twentieth-century France, died before the novel was completed, providing an extra symbolic meaning to the journey. Beware of the chameleon law as you endeavor to live your dream, instead of dreaming your life!

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Related post: Better a wrong decision than no decision (February 14th, 2007)

But it Takes Guts

In this article I want to pick up the broken pieces that resulted from my organizational culture rant of an earlier post. I stated that measuring culture is the wrong pot to piss in (well, not in those exact words, but I did meet some HR managers who were not too happy about the directness). In contrast to that particular article, I now want to focus on how to approach organizational culture. More in particular, I argue that philosophy and not psychology holds the keys to organizational culture.

Doing Versus Being
Without getting too philosophical we should note that the way you are being is the source of your reality, which in turn is the source of your actions. But the domain of being is hidden because it is not referred to in everyday action oriented language. ‘Being denies its own coming into existence’, as Martin Heidegger notes.

The point is that changing an organizational culture is creating something that is currently not possible in your reality. It is not improving something that is now already possible in your context by making it better, different or more (which is the domain of DOING). Instead, it is exchanging the current context for a new one in which certain things all of a sudden become possible (context is the domain of BEING).

Again the key insight comes from the philosopher Martin Heidegger. According to him, language is the only leverage for changing the world around you. This is because people apprehend and construct reality through the way they speak and listen. In her book The Last Word On Power, Tracy Goss continues Heidegger’s statement. According to her, by learning to uncover the concealed aspects of your current conversations and learning to engage in different types of new conversation, you can alter the way you are being, which, in turn, alters what’s possible.

The Anatomy of our Perception
In the previous article on culture I ended by saying that hat our inability to measure culture does not prevent us from creating one. But first, let us have a look at what it is made out of. As you remember, culture is a sense making mechanism that works like a pair of glasses you are wearing. It determines your perception, i.e.: the data you select.

Sense making is hard coded into all human beings. It is something we do all the time (you can not ‘not do it‘, like it is impossible to ‘not taste’ the food that is in our mouth) and it always follows the seven steps that are derived from Karl Weick’s seven characteristics of Sense Making in organizations:
(Click on the drawing to enlarge)

1. The Past: We make sense of our experiences by comparing them with previous experiences. The organizational past is an important indicator in predicting the reaction to the current organizational change. The past is something that comes walking in through the back door of emotions. People remember events that have the same emotional tone as what they currently feel. Past events are reconstructed in the present as explanations, not because they look the same but because they feel the same.

2. My Relations: We make sense of changes in organizations while in conversation with others, while reading communications from others, and while exchanging ideas with others.

3. My Labels: People are sense-making creatures. Whenever a change happens that affects us we give it a label and put it into a known category (dangerous, stupid, beautiful, etc.). Almost instinctively, we respond with familiar questions: Who is behind this? What are the credentials of those people? Who said so? What will become of us after that change? Do they have the support of management?

4. A Declaration: Words have consequences. We should never underestimate the power of words and conversations. A situation is “talked” into existence, and the basis is laid for action to deal with it. Declarations are the way we translate stuff from below the surface into explicit knowledge. As a simple example, when people constantly say that “this project stinks” they create a climate in which the observation of difficulties is stimulated and the observation of possibilities is constrained.

5. The Real Story: People are interested in the truth, not the details. And people are not stupid. We construct the meanings of things based on reasonable explanations of what might be happening rather than through scientific discovery of “the real story.” Here is a warning flag to heed at this point: What is a simple truth for one group, such as managers, often proves implausible for another group, such as employees.

6. The Timeslot: Sense making is linked to timing. Like an airplane waiting for takeoff, an event will only get a limited slot for takeoff in the attention span of an individual. If that moment of attention happens to be the right one, it helps in setting a culture.

7. The Triggers: Nobody is capable of observing it all. Our observation is based on extracted cues. The cues that we observe depend on what we expect to observe, As a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, we shape our reality according to how we expect it to be. When we think we are going to succeed at something, we will be triggered by every cue that confirms this reality and act upon it, and vice versa.

The Anatomy of Culture Creation
In the table below and the drawing on the right I have taken the anatomy of our perception and created seven matching steps that are necessary for creating an new organizational culture.

(Click on the drawing to enlarge)

Working on these seven components, all at the same time ensures a shift on the level of ‘being’ of the organization by setting a new context in which different things are possible.

Audit your “ROC” – Return On Communications
All of these elements (not necessarily in that order) constitute the key points of an organizational culture. This is what you need to monitor during the complete lifecycle of any change program. A successful communication strategy during organizational change takes into account the anatomy of our perception and works towards a similar mechanism in order to create a new culture.

Eventually, when scanning through your communication plan, all of these steps should be catered for; either in communication principles or in concrete actions. More important, this should also work the other way around: if you identify any communication action that does not accomplish any of the seven steps above, you should seriously question its added value for the program and the return on investment of attention, time, and money (exactly in that ranking order of scarcity).
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Sources used in this article:
Goss, T.: The Last Word On Power, Currency: Doubleday. 1996
Weick, K.: Sensemaking in Organizations, Thousand Oaks: Sage Pubications. 1995