The role of neuroplasticity in organizational change
By: Sara Coene
Tags: Neuroscience, Organizational Change, Change Design, Psychology, Design Thinking

I never thought I would ever use such a wise title. Just to be clear, I am not a scientist. I am an applicator and a seeker. I am especially looking for better ways to help organizations change. And in this, behavioural sciences play an increasingly important role. I am currently reading the book ‘The older the better’ by neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin. It is not a book about change management, but as from page 154 my change management brain was triggered anyway. The author talks about the Berlin and Innsbruck experiments that form a convincing story about neuroplasticity (how the brain rewires itself) in the short term.

The world upside down

The Inssbruck experiments used glasses that turned the world upside down. As in the Berlin experiment, volunteers who wore the glasses adapted to this new experience in a relatively short period of time. During the first three days, the participants made a lot of mistakes and only gradually adapted. However, when the participants woke up on the fifth day, everything seemed to stand up straight, as if nothing had happened. When they took off their glasses again, the world turned upside down again. Interestingly, the adjustment back to normal only took a few minutes.

Source: David Pescovitz on boingboing.net

The reason that the initial adjustment took so long and the return to the previous state so quickly, has to do with the difference in biology between the well-grounded paths (as the participants experienced the world so far) and the changes that were made in a few days (the world visually upside down). I found this very interesting also from a change management point of view.

Neuroplasticity and change projects

Change projects very often involve behavioural change, such as the evolution towards digital working. They aim for a new behaviour among a large group of people. But whether it concerns an organisation of 50,000 employees or one of 100, in the end the desired change is always the sum of the individual behavioural changes. And so neuroplasticity, or how the brains of individuals rewire themselves, plays a very important role in change, it seems to me.

New desired behavior, however, has to compete with old behaviors, the well-grounded paths that are strongly rooted in habits. That is why so many changes die a quiet death after a while. When the pressure or attention is gone, which often happens after an initial focus, the new habit slowly seeps away again and old habits surface again.

It is not because the motivation is there that behavior changes sustainably

Years ago I guided teams towards huddles and standup meetings. That worked well at first. There was a lot of enthusiasm, people felt that the productivity of the meetings improved. That’s good right? That should have been enough to maintain the new habit, because everyone saw the benefits. If it were that simple, twe would all easily walk 10 miles in less than an hour and eat little meat. It’s not because the motivation is there that the behavior changes sustainably. And the experiments show why this can come about (even though I may draw premature conclusions from the book here, I thought it would be interesting to at least ask whether this is also relevant to change in organizations).

The standup meetings did not last long. At first, people sat on the edge of the tables, and not much later, when attention had slackened and the coach was working on another project, everyone was sitting neatly back on the desk chair around the management table staring at a PowerPoint with too many words. The well-grounded path was found again and embraced like an old friend.

So what can you do?

My first conclusion is that the new paths should get at least as much chance as the old paths had. So a lot of attention and tenacity is needed. When old behavior is already very old (habits that have been ingrained for decades), you can’t expect to change things with a change track of one and a half years. And let that be a big problem in many organizations. Under the pressure of increasing external change, the internal focus seems to also have to change continuously.

Methods to support habits

What is needed, therefore, is attention for the desired behavioral change until long after the first signs of new habits become visible. Of course, we should not be so naive as to think that organizations will suddenly focus and think about a few new behaviours in the long term (although as an idealist I do want to continue to believe in it :)). However, we can look for ways to support young habits, so that the new path is followed as much as possible. And preferably through ways that require as little human intervention as possible over time. So we will have to design these ways on the one hand and on the other hand integrate them into the daily operation of teams.

Stop the unwanted

A first thing I think about is taking away what is no longer wanted. That will not always be possible, but if it is possible, it works very effectively. In the example of the standup meetings it would certainly have helped that the meeting room no longer had chairs and a table and was fully equipped to facilitate this kind of meetings. Or if you want people to work with Teams and no longer use Skype, make sure they can use Skype less and less easily. The bottom line is to make the old habit as difficult as possible or even impossoble.

Triggering

A second way is through triggering. By sending a small notification or reminder on a regular basis, preferably at the right time, you can build up and strengthen new habits. Just look at how notifications on Linkedin help you with the -maybe not so desired- habit of viewing your feed. But also offline, getting your sports clothes ready, visibly next to your toothbrush, can help you do your morning run more regularly. These are the so-called external triggers. Internal triggers are even more interesting. They are imprinted associations, such as: ‘after I’ve had my first cup of coffee, I’ll take a tour to talk to my team’. They take a bit longer to set up, but are super powerful.

Make it easy

A third way is to make the change as easy as possible. That is the opposite of the first tactic I described. Make the new habit as easy as possible to carry out. Do not leave people (or yourself) too much room to think. Often people work with ‘opt-in’ choices, then you have to decide for yourself whether or not you go along with something, such as organ donation. In such case, people have to think. In countries where organ donation is an ‘opt-in’ choice, the percentage of organ donors is drastically lower than in countries where this is an ‘opt-out’ choice. In the latter case, you must explicitly state that you do not want to be an organ donor. Most people do want to be donors and do the right thing for society (after all, there is a great shortage of organs), so make it as easy as possible for them. If you want your employees to work with continuous learning, make sure that they are able to consult learning materials quickly and as soon as they have some time. Or that they can only switch off the notification system via an opt-out.

Use the power of the group

If a group or team has developed a good habit and has made clear agreements about it, then an individual is allowed to fall back into an old habit for a while, he or she will be reminded of the agreements quickly enough. When a large part of the team loses attention, due to high workload for example, then the risk of decay into old habits arises. That is why we should focus on maintaining the dialogue between the team members and make sure that if something is in danger of becoming diluted, this becomes easy to discuss. A WhatsApp group (if the habit of this is established ;)) or regular consultations in which this can be discussed are examples to do this. Behavior that can be monotored through digital tools can be stimulated by reminders or small nudges when the behavior collapses a bit. The nudge can be given to the whole team, making use of the group feeling.

Make it attractive and valuable

And then we come to a fifth way, and that is to make the change itself as beautiful and pleasant as possible. The eye wants to be treated as well, so make sure that the new is more pleasant to look at than the old. Offering that learning material quickly but in an old-fashioned format is a worse option than opting for fresh material in a modern learning style. The outside is important, but the inside is more important, we all know that :). That’s why the most important thing and the basis of every change is that the new habit has added value. That it is something that people want to repeat. If the solution is not good, or if people do not believe in it at all, you can try to move heaven and earth, it will hardly work.

It’s in the mix

It is the combination of these methods that reinforces new habits and, if applied consistently, increases the chances of success. In a period of too much change at the same time, it makes sense to look for ways to integrate these habit enhancers into the daily operation of a team or organization, preferably as automated as possible. Triggers can be programmed, modernization of tools and materials can be chosen on a regular basis, opt-out choices can become policies, etc.

Designers of change

That is why I strongly believe that change management evolves more and more towards change design: designing the context that supports behavioral change, based on insights from the behavioral sciences. Change management itself then becomes more limited. Which is not bad as the focus or attention for change management often fades or stops after a while, even before the habits are really formed. So let’s look for ways to design and integrate behavioral change in all initiatives and decisions that are taken within an organization. Not easy, but important and fascinating.