What Rebels at Work can Learn from 2020
Staying at Home has revealed some fantastic rock artists in my neighborhood!
What a year this has been! And we are still 16 days away from its midpoint. Just to name a few: a global pandemic, threats of war hither and yon, and the worldwide awakening to the horrifying consequences of our absurd obsession with skin color. Much has been revealed about the nature of human relations, complex social dynamics, and the limits of power, science, and facts. And almost all of it contains learnings for those of us who want to do all we can to improve organizations and work.
Here’s a catalog of a few of them.
People resist “solutions” that inconvenience them. Wearing a face mask appears to be just too much bother for many people, and the fact that it can help slow the spread of an unusually deadly virus is just not a persuasive-enough argument. Rebels at Work often cannot comprehend just how inconvenient their solutions appear to other people. Adding even one step to an already-established routine will be resisted staple and hole-punch, no matter how great the potential downstream benefit. And oddly enough, people can get attached to processes that are no longer productive and resist eliminating them as well. “But that’s the most important thing I do!” Our multiple crises have revealed yet again how we can develop ideological, value-based attachments to even the most trivial things. Which is the next learning…
Humans develop emotional attachments to the darndest things. One of our longstanding learnings is that Rebels at Work should not underestimate how attached we can become to the Status Quo. And it’s never a good idea to demean those who actually like (love?) the way things are currently done, no matter how creaky and slow they may seem. What’s important here is to realize how difficult it is to move people away from these ideological, emotional attachments. Most such attachments are impervious to facts, logic, basically any type of analytical approach. Something that I think is pretty straightforward—wearing a mask to inhibit the spread of a virus—is now seen by many as unmanly or unappealing or un-American.
And we’re not just pointing fingers at others here. Rebels at Work can also develop emotional attachments to the darndest things. I can remember when we were trying to bring digital processes to the Intelligence Community, some of us just wanted to eliminate the option of printing paper altogether. Some looked down on anyone who wasn’t prepared to read everything on the screen. (Could that have been me? I’m not saying…) Risking the attainment of your overall goals because of an ideological position on a secondary or tertiary issue is just plain nutty. But not unusual. Try not to become too attached to any particular aspect of your change agenda. And when you reach an emotional roadblock in an organization, don’t mock it and don’t try to reason your way through it. Be patient and give people time to grow out of their attachment (a little more on that later.)
One last thought on this issue: emotions, ideologies, and values are heightened by uncertainty. When it’s unclear what to do next, when the situation is muddy, we humans rely upon our emotions and values to navigate. If I don’t know what to do, I’ll trust what feels right or take the course of action that best fits my values.
Facts aren’t what they used to be. I don’t know about you, but I’ve ended up in way too many Facebook discussions trying to gently persuade former high school classmates in Texas that COVID19 was not just another flu or the latest hoax. Facts and truths are no longer self-evident; there are just too many sources of assertion out there, not to mention plain old disinformation and lies, that people can reference to support whatever position they are emotionally attached to. More facts are viewed with more suspicion. “I can see you’re trying to trick me.”
And so Rebels at Work must understand that a good analytical argument will only take them so far. A presentation full of information may be analytically sound but emotionally barren. There will always be a group of people you cannot reach with just the facts. One of the advantages of leavening your case for change with stories—yes, from the heart—is that you broaden the range of people you appeal to. And to be truly effective, tell their stories, not yours. The political scientist James C. Scott argues in his book Two Cheers for Anarchism that one of the best qualities of people who are charismatic is their ability to listen to others’ stories. “The key condition for charisma” Scott writes “is listening very carefully and responding.” Charisma is not a power you the independent person possesses; charisma is an attribute granted to you by your audience.
Change is a personal conversion experience. So if facts don’t matter and emotional resonance is what carries the day, what then can be done to expedite organizational change? Not much is what I would say. Organizations are inanimate objects that can’t actually experience change; it’s the people inside the organization who are experiencing the emotions, resonating with some facts, and, in some cases, adopting new values. Black Lives Matter is a compelling example of how deeply-felt experiences can change the thinking of millions of people in ways that years of careful argument never managed.
The successful Rebel at Work seeks to touch as many individuals as possible, constantly looking for the point of resonance that could spark a personal conversion experience. Each supporter you attract has the potential to reach many more people. And that’s how most progress is made; one person at a time.
One last point. 2020 is teaching us that timing is everything. Organizations and societies can live with probems for a long time until some not quite tangible energy produces a more immediate motivation for change. There is nothing so weak as an idea whose time has not come. An idea carried by a Rebel at Work may be the best idea ever held by man or woman, but if the timing is not right, progress won’t. But 2020 has been the year when many previously frail ideas have finally become inevitable. Rebels take heart: there are still six months to go.
