Some problems survive every new process. The company adds a rule or a tool, and the same thing keeps happening. In those cases the cause is usually a belief people share about what’s safe to do at work. This Practice names that belief and changes the conditions that keep it true. It takes a leader, because the leader’s own reactions are often part of the cause.
A tool that supports it
Cultural Fix Leadership is a way of acting, and different tools can guide it. One made for this kind of problem is the “Immunity to Change” map, from the Harvard psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey.
The map has four columns that you fill in from left to right. First comes the commitment, the thing the group says it wants. Next to it you list what people do, or don’t do, that works against it. In the third column you ask what those behaviors protect people from. Kegan and Lahey call the answer a hidden competing commitment. Last comes the big assumption. It’s the belief that makes the protection feel necessary.
For this Practice, the map moves the problem from behavior to belief. The fix is then a small, safe test of the big assumption, run where people can see the result.
When to use it
Use it when a problem has outlasted two or three process fixes, and the behavior behind it shows up across many teams. The signal is a company that agrees with a goal in every meeting and acts against it every week.
It needs a leader with the standing to change how the company responds, and the willingness to look at their own part. A belief held by 200 people won’t move because of a memo.
How to use it
- Write the commitment in one sentence, as the company states it.
- List what people do that works against it. Use behaviors you’ve seen, with numbers when you have them.
- Ask people what they’d worry about if they did the opposite. Their worry points to the hidden commitment.
- Write the big assumption as an “if, then” sentence in their words.
- Design a small test that could prove the assumption wrong, and run it yourself, in public. Changing your own reaction first is the hard part.
Example
At a 200-person company, projects are reported as on schedule until the week of the deadline. Its executive team has changed the report format twice. Nothing has moved.
The operations chief fills in the map with six project managers. Hearing about problems early is the commitment. Against it, reports stay green, and in review meetings the first question from leaders is “who let this happen?” The managers say what they’d worry about: being the name attached to a delay. Their big assumption reads, “If I report a problem early, I’ll be seen as bad at my job.”
Problems reported more than two weeks ahead go from 2 in the previous quarter to 11. The executive team makes the format permanent.
Phrases you can use
- “We’ve changed the process more than once and the behavior stayed. What are people protecting?”
- “What would you worry about if you did the opposite?”
- “What do we do, as leaders, that makes that worry reasonable?”
- “Let’s test that belief on a small scale before we change anything else.”
- “I’ll go first. Tell me what you see me do differently.”
- For a leader, when someone does it: “You named a belief and tested it in front of everyone. What did people do differently the first time?”
How to know it worked
The behavior changes in the place where the test ran, and the numbers show it. People describe the old belief in the past tense. With time, the new response becomes what the company expects of its leaders, and it holds when the person who started it isn’t in the room.
In a Skill Deck Track on Problem Solving, a person can choose this Practice, and the meetings they already have show when they use it.
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