Pain Is the Best Motivation for Changing How People Work
But if you don’t know about the pain, you might resist the push for change.
When I was traveling on a consulting job in December of 2000, I slipped on some ice-covered steps and fell, badly injuring my right shoulder. It was the most severe pain I’ve ever experienced. Three days later, I finally got home and saw a doctor, who informed me that I had a rotator cuff tear. A physical therapist gave me exercises to do at home. The pain powerfully motivated me to do the exercises and try to recover quickly, especially because I’m very dominantly right-handed — my left arm is primarily for visual symmetry.
As with individuals, pain is a powerful change motivator for teams and organizations. I’m not talking about artificial, externally induced pain, such as managers or customers who demand the impossible, but rather the very real pain the team experiences from its current ways of working.
One way to encourage people to change is to explain how marvelously green the grass will be when they reach Level 5 on the Capability Maturity Model Integration scale or are fully Scrum-Lean-Kanban agilified. However, a more compelling motivation to get people moving is to point out that the grass behind them is on fire. Software process improvement (SPI) should emphasize…
