What REALLY moves the needle in people change, part 1
Move the needle. It’s one of the expressions in the workplace that many would like to see banned, but is nonetheless alive and well in corporatespeak today.
Among senior leaders and within HR, the expression is thrown about willy-nilly as though to concede that anything more than ‘moving the needle’ is impossible. In addition, rarely are we told by people what exactly the needle we’re trying to move is measuring, or how it moves.
It’s a shame, because if we really did measure our needle-moving efforts in people change, we’d be faced with some unwelcome surprises.
Needle-moving and the Scientific Method
Mostly, moving the needle involves people change or behaviour change. This, inevitably brings us to the importance of accurate psychology, especially a reliable understanding of how people behave in certain contexts.
How do we know how people behave? The old way (we can even call this ‘the medieval way’) was to consult an authority (like the Bible) and issue a bunch of practices from that. Sailors followed this method for centuries by using the crackpot idea handed down by the Vatican-led universities that the book of Leviticus could be used as a basis for navigation. Predictably, many of their ships ended up on the rocks, with the loss of tens of thousands of lives.
The new way (we can call this ‘the modern way’) has been to build knowledge on the scientific method, which demands experiment and observation. For example, when Galileo came along and demonstrated that the Earth really could not be at the centre of our planetary system as the Book of Leviticus held, he did so via observing events that falsified assumptions made by the old way, and the door was thus opened to more accurate celestial navigation.
Why am I talking about modern and medieval ways? What’s that got to do with needle-moving? Surely we follow the modern approach in organisations, right?
A Fish Can’t See Water
Like science, psychology can be seen as a tool. Understanding the solar system enabled accurate measurement of the heavens, which in turn allowed for more accurate navigational tools, which in turn led to fewer fatal and more fruitful voyages. It’s not, ahem, rocket science to see the connection between accurate science and effective practice.
We humans are at the apex of our development, so we assume that all the tools we use in organisations must be accurate and effective, right? No way we are in the medieval category, no way. Right?
But what makes us so sure? How do we know that we’re not the same as the doltish backwoodsmen who continued to hold, even in the face of overwhelming evidence (like moons orbiting Jupiter, for example) that the Earth is the centre of the Universe. And not one or two, but just about everybody. Galileo was the dolt and the dunce, not them! In fact, he wasn’t just a dolt, but an outright heretic. Arrest the felon! Pretty much anyone with an education in Renaissance societies saw it this way, too.
It’s surprisingly easy when a social environment is like this for us to assume anything the group holds to be patently true — especially when all the academics and other bigwigs of the day rally behind the central dogma. Galileo was put under house arrest and Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake.
Yet in this case, it turns out the heretics and felons were right, and just about everyone else in society was wrong. A fish can’t see water. People were so blinded, it turned out, by their faith that their science was at the apex (as they thought) that they couldn’t see it any other way. Because so many respected academics subscribed to it, it had to be accurate.
This moment came to mark a major turning point in our civilisation, one where the northern European states who would come on to embrace the scientific method raced ahead, and the real dolts — the ones that desperately clung onto the millennia old dogma even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary — were left in the dust. Bye bye Holy Roman Empire, hello the commercial age.
So following scientific evidence is not just good practice — it can be make or break for people’s welfare, an organisation — or an Empire.
But what’s this got to do with moving organisational needles in people change?
Time to burn some books
You keep lying when you should be truthing — Nancy Sinatra
In the follow-up to this article, we will explore the possibility that the psychology organisations use to move their needles are just about as useful as a set of Ptolemaic epicycles. In other words, not very, and probably even harmful.
But your author, in full heretic mode, will go further than this. He will propose that the methods organisation use are medieval, harmful to people’s mental health and company performance, and even have the temerity to present what does make the difference per the evidence (OK what does move the needle if you insist).
Furthermore, there will be no need for any telescopes in this endeavour. Instead he will lay out the findings of the psychology and practices over 90% of organisations routinely use with a blind faith bordering on religiosity, plain and simple. He will let his candle hover over the experimental results for concepts and practices such as Mindset, Grit, Performance Management, Competencies and the 9 Box — practices which are often presented as needle-moving and widely used throughout organisations today. What is the evidence for these practices’ efficacy, he will ask. And if there aren’t any effects found — how can anyone hope to move any needles?
He will raise the possibility whether the practices companies use might all be flawed to the point of being damaging, with the consulting-space taking up the role of modern-day prelates from the Vatican, and then everyone just pandering to each other’s preconceived notions and preferences like one big shoal of fish swimming through an ocean of blather.
As Nancy Sinatra might say, I’ve found myself a brand new box of matches. Here’s to dolts and heretics!
Stay tuned for Part Two, it’s sure to be explosive…
