Transforming A Stubborn Department

Transforming a department, a team or even a whole company into something different is a very complex and exhausting task. Especially when it comes to IT, most CEOs go the easy way, even though this way is still very hard to do. They outsource the IT because they don’t expect anything meaningful coming out of this department any more, and these IT departments usually have reduced themselves to administrate the existing situation. If something needed to be changed or new functionality had to be added, they already bought it from outside the company.

So cutting this department totally off makes sense in many ways:

• Innovation was already outsourced
• Administration becomes much cheaper the larger the scale
• After a few years, you can insource the department again, with fresh people in the team
• Changing an existing team is an enormous effort, and in almost all cases fails

The last point is what interests me most. Why are companies failing in transforming an existing team into something much better, into something that the company not only wants, but also needs to become a more productive company?

The above way to basically outsource a failed department, just to get rid of it and the team members, and a few years later rebuild it, can’t be the best way, especially as you lose a massive amount of knowledge in this case.

I think the problem is that the approach to change is wrong, as most people don’t understand what makes humans change.

It takes a tremendous effort, if not impossible at all, to change people who actually do not want to change, or are scared to change. It is not a lack of willpower or motivation in these people. It’s just that change in humans (and by the way, also in animals) doesn’t work like this most of the times.

Are we good in changing by „wanting“ it? No way! We all failed with our New Year’s resolutions! We all failed with some kind of change that we wanted so badly. Even though we really want it, we fail.

So how much sense does it make to want someone else to change?

But think about what happens if the conditions surrounding you change in such ways that you have no chance to stick to your old behavior. You can’t eat cookies if you don’t have them within reach. It is as simple as that.

People usually don‘t change because they want to change, nor when they were told to change.

They change because they want to adapt to a changed environment.

Let that sink in for a minute.

You tend to snooze your alarm clock in the morning? Even though you already have the loudest you can buy? Try moving it into the next room, or so far away that you need to jump out of bed to turn it off. You will never again snooze and lose the valuable morning hours or come late to work.

You tend to search for your car keys at home because you can’t remember where you put them last time? The people surrounding you get almost mad from you hysterically searching for your keys? Dedicate a special place for them that is very visible when you come home, and put it there. You will never search again for them.

No longer losing your keys, or no longer coming late to work because you snoozed, are the things you wanted to change. Your boss and your colleagues will see the change that you’re no longer late to work. Your family and friends will notice that you’ve changed and you no longer search for your keys. But it’s not motivation or willpower that solved your problem, it’s a change in your environment that enabled your change.

What humans do better than all other species is to adapt to change. This made us so strong. It’s not that humans wanted to change, they needed to change to survive.

While this seems to be an elemental approach, and changing a team is not about surviving as a species, the mechanisms behind change stay the same. Actually, it’s the same biological pattern and how our brain works.

Harshly spoken, and I can hear the HR departments scream all over the world, it is completely useless to ask a team for change, or what they need so that they can change. Do this and you will fail, as all others have failed before.

Instead, change their environment, and reward them, on a personal level but also on the team level, for every adaption they manage to make.

You might lose some employees on this way, but in the end you have a much better outcome than outsourcing the whole department:

• Key knowledge stays in your company
• People in the team will be highly motivated as they experienced the benefits of changing, and have learned a lot of new things (and want to learn much more)
• The rest of the company will see that the company cares about the people in the company
• The rest of the company will see that change is possible