#21 Does The Difference Between Change And Transformation Matter?

See if the difference matters to you and those around you.

A note to listeners and readers of Helpful Questions Change Lives:

Sometimes, a question can provoke an immediate, automatic answer in you. One that frames what you look for when reading or listening to a piece like this. One that conditions what you’re prepared to agree with, or what you hope to find and have confirmed.

I looked more closely at this kind of conditioning in my first series of posts; inviting you pay closer attention to the why-do-you-experience-life-as-you-do question. Not so that you’ll follow me or do as I do, more for you to wonder about that automaticity in the way you make sense of the experiences you have. And to help you realise why you, me and everyone can sometimes get stuck in old thinking habits that blind us.

In this second series of posts, signalled by the yellow background in the picture below, I explore what makes sense to you and those around you in the different groups you’re a part of.

Here, the invitation is to wonder about what you and other members of these groups might see anew, were you NOT bound by sense making that may have served you well at one time, but doesn’t so much now. To wonder what shows up were you to notice and interrupt the automatic ways of thinking we all have.

I do that by sharing stories of how my own mind changed on various topics. Not to convince you of anything, as I say, more to provoke wonder in you, about whether my experience helps you in your context. Enjoy playing with the questions in this series. Let me know in the comments if what you discover helps or not.

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If you’re using the words change and transformation interchangeably, this post may sound like a pedantic play on words.

Similarly for me at one time. In fact, I had a downer on both of them.

Despite the fact my work is very much located in the...well...change and transformation field, I had a bit of a dilemma. I thought change was such an overused word it meant little, and transformation sounded hyperbolic to me.

Here’s why…

I was corporally punished in school at the age of 7 for a misdemeanour I didn’t commit. This made me wary of those with power for over 45 years!

I had what is called ‘a bias’. The reason being, because one teacher used their power to punish unjustly, it didn’t mean all teachers, or all people with power, would do the same. Biases are called that because they don’t stack up to logical reasoning. But, sometimes, we don’t see them, we understandably live from the memory of a past, lived experience, unknowingly. Hence the term ‘unconscious bias’.

My unconscious bias with respect to people with power led me to believe someone was going to change or transform someone or something else by whatever means possible. A power imbalance was in play: those to be changed or transformed had little option other than to go along with those who were about to do the changing and transforming TO them. (Much like the cane across both palms were intended to change and transform my behaviour back in my school days.)

Only later, as I became conscious of my bias and how it coloured my perception of others with power, did my dilemma about what to call the field I work in diminish. I realised that change and transformation isn’t done to people, however much we might think it is, if it happens at all, it does so inside them.

If change and transformation happens in our consciousness, as we make sense of the sensations, thoughts and feelings that appear there, the coercive, power-over element is removed. We reclaim agency over our own meaning making. Which, in groups, can mean members wanting to change and transform of their own accord, because they see both personal and collective benefits from doing so. They get engaged by making their lived experience of being and working together one that’s mutually fulfilling.

Paradoxically, I discovered, that’s when team members are more likely to be curious about whether there is a difference between change and transformation and if so, does it matter.

I found that they think there is and it does.

Sense making conversations about change and transformation  

Picture this workshop scene.

A group of consulting engineers have the dual role of delivering reports and advice to clients as well as selling more services to them. Their focus in this part of the workshop is on the sales part of their role.

Some frame it as a challenge - “I’ve never been a good salesperson, I always feel like I’m being a nuisance to clients for even raising the prospect of getting more business from them.” Others only see opportunity - “What we do solves so many problems for clients, they welcome exploring how else we can help with other difficulties they have.”

The group knows that whatever starting frame they use shapes where everyone’s attention goes and what outcomes they achieve. They have also recognised they have a tendency to get caught up in right vs. wrong, bad vs good dialogues that don’t serve them well. To circumvent this, they’ve co-created this helpful question as their starting frame - what can we do differently to ensure those who depend on what we do, get more of what they need and want?

Before answering it though, they zoom in on what’s meant by ‘do-differently’. It leads to a conversation about change and transformation that goes something like this.

Do differently can mean change what we do already to make it better. It implies incrementalism, small changes bit by bit. It’s like making a new year’s resolution, try it and if doesn’t work change back.

Do differently can also have a transformational affect. It has a permanence to it - a bit like quitting cigarettes and becoming a non smoker, or getting rid of any habit for good. It's not a temporary, sticking plaster solution. It's a no going back one.

We can take a leaf out of the product innovation book when transforming how we do things. Take a smartphone, for example, you can do so much on it, so why go back to how life was before (for those of you that can remember those days?!) No need to carry road maps around, have a separate diary, notebook, bank cards, etc. Ditto a laptop, motor vehicle etc. Engineering led technological innovations are those that change the way we do things for good. On the whole, they’re so much better than what we had before.

The group wondered where their conversation might go if they focused on ‘change’ as described this way. They concluded they’d want to talk about lead generation, sales pitching, selling techniques, conversion rates, quotas, targets, geographical territories and the like. This would be a closer look at what they already do to search for where changes could be made.

Then they reflected on what they might discuss if their search was for a permanent transformation they felt good about. They chose this path instead of the change one.

It led them to how the noise in their head about selling to meet targets felt like pressure. Far from being a motivating force it prevented them from initiating new conversations with clients. It also clouded their ability to fully hear what clients were grappling with that they wished they had better answers to.

Ironically, talking about this, for the first time, relieved some of the pressure. For instance, ideas like ‘being a nuisance’ when it comes to selling, could be seen against what the helpful question was getting to the heart of - ensuring those who depend on the engineers’ work get more of what they need and want.

Similarly, helping colleagues open up and talk about what was really going on in their sense making, got the whole group fully engaged. Their quality of listening soared. Their experience of the conversation felt great. So much so they wanted to replicate it with clients too.

They set up what they called ‘the listen-and-respond experiment.’ It involved asking clients a helpful question and really listening to how they responded free of all the mental noise they once had about ‘selling’. They found that once they got to the heart of what clients wanted but didn’t currently have, their ability to respond creatively, either there and then, or after talking it through with their team colleagues later, grew significantly. Sales numbers, of course, followed. The experiment morphed into a new working practice - ‘how we do things around here.’

The group concluded had they gone down the change path, which they almost certainly would have in times gone by, they would not have reached the same outcome.

Heart-warming conversations

This kind of conversation warms my heart because it helps people be at their best.

It shows a group is thinking about the lens through which a problem - sales in this case - is viewed. See only a challenge that requires change and you miss the opportunity of a more permanent way forward that transformation can bring.

Similarly the group didn’t fall into the trap of cracking on with a task before they were sure the process they were using would serve them well. For instance…

• Rather than use a common understanding of what ‘do differently’ meant, they got clear first.

• Rather than risk a right vs. wrong debate on the best way to sell, which would only have created winners and losers by beating down each other’s arguments, they took time to formulate a unifying, helpful question.

• Rather than talk over one another or defer to the most senior member of the group, they gave each other the space they needed to speak openly, about their different sense making.

This is how they arrived at the experiment that has now become their new practice and meant selling isn’t the problem it once was. The solution wasn’t imposed on them, in ‘done-to’ fashion, it emerged from them during a carefully-constructed conversation that warmed their hearts too.

I’m curious about the extent to which the groups you’re in have similar heart-warming conversations. Would distinguishing between change and transformation help them? Would you say they attend to how they’re working together as well as what they’re working on? (You may wish to share this post to get their views.)

Remember, where I’m coming from here is based on my own experience of the culture in groups. I define it as how members feel overall about the way things are done around here. I’ve come to realise over many years that when they can genuinely say “how we do things now is so much better, going back to the old ways makes no sense” you know transformation has occurred or is in train.

When people enjoy the culture they’re helping to craft, it makes a huge difference.

Next time I’ll cover what makes someone a key influencer of a group’s culture and how critical they are in any transformation initiative.

Until then,

Kindest,

Roger

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Be In Conversation With Me

I set up HQCL to help those who feel stuck in all or bits of their life.

The content here may quench your thirst for what helps you change your inner life and have a better experience of your outer one.

You, however, may want to go further, to satisfy two needs. 

First, to explore unanswered questions that sometimes remain, even after letting what you’ve learnt here sink in. 

If you’re in this situation join me for a 45-minute, online Ask Me Anything Conversation using this link.

Though this is a paid-for service ordinarily, I still don’t want money to stand in the way of you feeling helped. If the cost is unaffordable, therefore, just drop me a note explaining what you’ve learnt so far, as well as what questions you want answers to, and I’ll send you a link to join the AMA Conversation for free.  

Second, to have me alongside you for a while, guiding you as your awareness of the contents of your consciousness grows, and you observe changes in your experience of life.

If you feel you’d benefit from working one-to-one, in a more personalised way online, my 2-hour Guiding Conversations will help. 

Guiding Conversations put you in charge of how many you need for two reasons.

First, we all learn at different rates. Realising the life-changing potential behind understanding the why-do-you-experience-life-as-you-do question, and feeling it profoundly, can take a short amount of time for some, and longer for others. These conversations enable us to by guided by what emerges in them, and respond to what you need at different points in time. They mean we don’t have to force-fit stuff into a pre-set number of slots over a fixed time frame.

Second, knowing what each one costs, you can tailor the size of the investment you want to make in changing your life, according to your means.

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Other useful, free posts.

You can find all the posts in my first series here.

While it’s good to pick those whose titles speak to you most, I recommend these five in particular:

• #3 Being Right Here Right Now - Hard To Do? - This covers the idea of being fully present and what distracts us from that.

• #4 How We Experience Life Is Mysterious. Isn’t It? - This goes to the heart of the mystery surrounding why we get sensations, thoughts and feelings in the first place, and what the implications are of being at ease with this.

• #5 What Influence Do You Have Over Your Experience In Each Moment? - Here I look at what is and is not within our control and where we can exert influence when changing our experience.

• #6 If You Saw Wellbeing Like This, What Difference Would It Make? - If BEING WELL RIGHT NOW is the goal, this describes what that’s like and how our feelings can be a useful warning sign of wellbeing’s absence.

• #8 Why Do You Respond To “Difficult” Others Like That? - Here I invite you to consider some of the deeper, often-hidden assumptions we hold about the nature of human nature and their impact on your experience of difficult others.