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Set in your own ways?

Porus P. Munshi

Initiating change is, in most cases, easy. Maintaining change is where the problems arise. Change requires a sustained effort. What does it take to sustain change? We will examine three factors: will-power, comfort zones and, what I call, double-loop cha nge.

The concept of will-power

People often tell me that they lack will-power. The truth is nobody lacks will-power any more than he/she lacks biceps. Will-power is the biceps of the mind. Some people have strong biceps through constant exercise, others have weak or flaccid ones but b iceps, nonetheless, that can be strengthened with exercise. So also with will-power... the more you use it, the stronger it becomes.

Exerting will-power

How does one go about exerting will-power? We often think of will-power as something one exerts continuously, a sort of tooth gritting, steely-eyed constant straining against the odds.

But if you think about it, you will find that you really have to exert will-power for no more than fractions of a second at a time. Will-power is just a pulse. It is not a long-drawn wave. Suppose you have to talk to an upset client. You have two options -- either pick up the phone or postpone the call. That instant of decision, that flash of a moment is all it takes for will-power to come into play. Once you make that call, events will unfold all by themselves and will-power is no longer needed. It is the move from inertia to action that requires exercise of the will.

It is usually the start of an activity that requires will-power. Once started, we tend to continue that activity even if it is not exactly enjoyable. So the key lies in making that start every single day. Sometimes people feel discouraged if they are not able to continue with the session and have to give up halfway through. It really doesn't matter so much if you stop in the middle of an activity. It is more important that you make that start every day. You will gradually find that you quit less and les s during a session.

Most of us, unfortunately, do it the other way. Once started, we tend to force ourselves to finish off that session and then just don't begin the next day because it has been so painful the previous day. I would suggest that you make a start every single day and quit the session in the middle if you desire. Don't force yourself to continue. If you think you are quitting too much during a session, measure yourself -- either time yourself or measure what you produce. Time the start of the activity and whe n you end it. Make a note of the duration on a chart. Don't do anything else. Your inherent competitiveness will take over and you will try to extend the duration every day.

Coming back to will-power, what of long-drawn situations such as organisational change programmes? Do they need constant exercise of will-power? They don't. To illustrate, take an endurance event, say, running 10 km. Now, you can exert will-power every s tep of the way, gritting your teeth and saying `don't quit, don't quit', or you can exert it momentarily 10 times. At every km, you decide whether you are going to do another km or not. The first method is downright exhausting. The second is far more eff icient. You set sub-goals and exert will-power at the beginning of each sub-goal.

How does this work with a change programme? Besides having sub-goals, every day you are going to be confronted with a choice -- the new way or the old way. This choice can come a dozen or more times a day. Each time, for that fraction of a second, will-p ower is required. Once you take the step, events unfold and you have to deal with them as they arise.

Comfort zones

One reason why change is difficult is because we all have comfort zones -- zones within which we feel comfortable. These are like tolerance levels. The lower the tolerance level, the more something affects us. For instance, one may have a low tolerance l evel for sound, and when any sound exceeds this, discomfort ensues.

As we grow older our comfort zones keep shrinking. Children have a large comfort zone -- they can tolerate almost anything. But as adults we are no longer able to tolerate as much as children can. This mostly happens through conditioning. We begin to get comfortable in situations and then we find it difficult to step outside them. For instance, we get used to air-conditioning and then find it difficult to step out in the heat. Our tolerance for heat reduces. So also with any aspect of life; we get used to a certain way of living or working and our tolerance for anything outside this zone of comfort reduces.

The reason younger people are more sought after for a wide variety of jobs is not so much energy levels as large zones of comfort. They are more willing to tolerate discomfort that a middle-aged person is no longer willing to. It is not that he is unable to tolerate discomfort, it is just that he is not willing to. His comfort zone has shrunk and anything outside this is painful.

Any change demands that we step out of our comfort zone. And this is the most difficult part of coping with change. One trains to do this by constantly expanding one's zones of comfort in every area of life. If you have a comfort zone for sound tolerance , gradually raise it. If you have a comfort zone for cold, gradually expand it. If you have low tolerance for difficult people, gradually expand this. Today's corporate culture demands team players. And being a team player means having large comfort zone s to deal with the idiosyncrasies of different people. You just can't get by with low tolerance levels.

Constant expansion of comfort zones takes effort and a charting of progress. Suppose you want to increase contact with fellow workers. Spend time outside your office for constantly greater periods of time. Spend more time meeting people, just meeting wit h no definite objective. This constant expansion of comfort zones will give you the flexibility to not only cope with change, but to also actively seek it.

Double-loop change

Chris Argyris coined the terms single and double-loop learning. There is learning to solve a particular problem and then, more importantly, there is the habit of learning. Argyris gives the example of a thermostat. The thermostat learns whether it is too hot or too cold and turns the heat on or off. This is single-loop learning. But if the thermostat questions why it is set at a certain temperature, it would not only be able to detect error, it would have a more comprehensive view. This is double-loop l earning.

We can extrapolate this to change. There is single-loop change when we change to adapt to a new situation and there is double-loop change when we make it a habit to change: when we question each of our habitual responses and patterns of behaviour. The mo re you are able to exhibit double-loop change, the more effective you are going to be in every area of life.

So how does one go about acquiring the habit of double-loop change? One of the best ways is by varying the way you do things. If you brush your teeth with your right hand, try using your left. If you fold your arms across your chest in a certain way, try it the other way. If you habitually get up at 6 a.m., get up at 4.30 a.m. once in a while (and don't go back to bed). If you respond in a certain way to colleagues, change your response. For instance, if you habitually say `Good Morning', try saying `Hi , How are you today?' or `Your smile makes my day' or whatever. Inherent in all this is the questioning of why you do things the way you do them.

If you go through an entire day consciously changing everything that you do, you will be surprised at how wide a range of responses you really have for every single situation. I am not suggesting you do this every day. Just keep one day in the week as ch ange day and I guarantee that you will be amazed at how much this opens you out in terms of confidence, awareness, flexibility and control. You will find your thinking, your attitudes and your behaviour undergoing a sea-change for the better.

The A-factor

Awareness is the key to change and any improvement in performance. TQM, for instance, begins with an awareness of what is being done right at present and then adding constant measurable improvements. So also with personal change or performance improvemen t. A manager's skills are mostly soft skills, dealing with people, and usually only the end-result is seen as a measure of competence or effectiveness. His skills are rarely rated or measured day by day as, say, a production process is.

If awareness can be brought into the manager's everyday life, like the TQM programme, his performance just has to improve. How does the individual manager do this? Let's say a superior tells a manager, during an appraisal, that his subordinates complain that he is too critical. Rather than trying to be less critical, the manager will find it much more effective if he observes his habitual response to a subordinates' performance. All he has to do is rate his critical responses on a subjective scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high). After each interaction, if he says to himself, `My criticism was on level 8 just now (or 6, or 9, or 5)', he will find that his increased awareness will automatically reduce his criticism without his really trying. In any case, when o ne tries, it often comes across as artificial. In many, many cases, before starting to change something, if we just increase awareness, change occurs by itself. To change what is, see what is.

The author is a Chennai-based HR consultant. He can be reached at porusmun@hotmail.com