One day, an architect visited the building site of his latest project. There he saw three people all laying bricks. He asked each what they were doing. “I’m laying bricks,” the first responded. “I’m building a wall,” said the second. “I’m building a cathedral,” exclaimed the third.
The parable of the Three Bricklayers is a favorite amongst motivational speakers, urging their audiences to think beyond today’s tasks and this quarter’s goals to commit to a grandiose vision of eternal success and glory.
But there’s a problem.
The narrative changed
The person who had a vision of building a cathedral? They now believe they’re building ruins.
Is the C-Suite Quietly Quitting?
Recently published research found that three out of four executives believe that “without fundamental transformation* their organization will cease to exist” in ten years. That’s based on data from interviews with twenty-four “current or former CEOs who have led successful transformations” and 1,360 survey responses from C-Suite and next-generation leaders.
And, somehow, the news gets worse.
While 77% of C-suite executives report that they’re committed to their companies’ transformation efforts, but 57% believe their organization is taking the wrong approach to that transformation. But that’s still better than the 68% of Next-Gen executives who disagree with the approach.
So, it should come as no surprise that 71% of executives rate their companies’ transformation efforts as not at all to moderately successful. After all, it’s hard to lead people along a path you don’t agree with to a vision you don’t believe in.
Did they just realize that “change is hard in human systems?”
We all fall into the trap of believing that understanding something results in commitment and change.
But that’s not how humans work.
That’s definitely not how large groups of humans, known as organizations, work.
Companies’ operations are driven only loosely by the purpose, structures, and processes neatly outlined in HR documents. Instead, they are controlled by the power and influence afforded to individuals by virtue of the collective’s culture, beliefs, histories, myths, and informal ways of working.
And when these “opaque dimensions” are challenged, they don’t result in resistance,
They result in inertia.
“Organizational inertia kills transformations”
Organizations are “complex organisms” that evolve to do things better, faster, cheaper over time. They will continue doing so unless changed by an external force (yes, that’s Newton’s first law of motion).
That external force, the drive for transformation, must be strong enough to overcome:
- Insight Inertia stops organizations from getting started because there is a lack of awareness or acceptance amongst leaders that change is needed.
- Psychological Inertia emerges when change demands abandoning familiar success strategies. People embrace the idea of transformation but resist personal adaptation, defaulting to comfortable old behaviors.
- Action Inertia sets in and gains power as the long and hard work of transformation drags on. Over time, people grow tired. Exhausted by continuous change, teams progressively disengage, becoming less responsive and decisive.
But is that possible when 74% of executives are simply biding their time and waiting for failure?
“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Did you see the crack in all the doom and gloom above?
- 43% of executives believe their organizations are taking the right approach to transformation.
- 29% believe that their organizations’ transformations have been successful.
- 26% believe their company will still be around in ten years.
The majority may not believe in transformation but only 33% of bricklayers believed they were building a cathedral, and the cathedral still got built.
Next week, we’ll explore how.