Want Your Organization to Change? Put Feelings First

Want Your Organization to Change? Put Feelings First

Dan Heath

www.FastCompany.com

When we want people to change, we try to teach them something. We think if my Dad just understood the health complications obesity causes, he’d eat healthier. Or if my teenager just understood the danger of texting & driving, she’d quit it. The problem is this: Knowledge
rarely leads to change.

Look at the warnings on cigarette packs. “Cigarettes release carbon monoxide.” Do we think smokers simply don’t know that cigarettes are bad for them? A lack of knowledge isn’t the problem. Or take a company like GM. For years, people were warning its execs that the company was too
dependent on big SUVs and trucks, that it was falling behind other companies in innovation. A lack of knowledge wasn’t the problem. And mothers and fathers everywhere try to warn their kids that maybe a giant tattoo isn’t such a good idea. Good luck in that fight, Knowledge.

The same goes for organizational change. When we want our employees to move in a new direction, we try to educate them. We call them together and project a 72-slide PowerPoint. John Kotter, one of the top gurus on organizational change, say that most people think change happens in three stages. You analyze the situation, and you think really hard about the solution, and then you just change. But he says that’s almost never the way change happens. He says that in his experience,
it’s a different three-stage process: people SEE something that makes them FEEL something that gives them the fire to CHANGE. SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.